Factors affecting obedience

Question 1

Uniform ( situational)

Answer 1

• When the experimenter wore normal clothes obedience went from 20.5% to 20%

Question 2

Location ( situational)

Answer 2

• When the location changed to a rundown building obedience went from 65% to 47.5%
• Due to legitimacy of authority

Question 3

Proximity ( situational)

Answer 3

• When the T and L were in adjoining rooms obedience went from 60% - 40%
• When the T was forced to put the L hand on the plate obedience went from 40% to 30%

Question 4

Agentic state ( socio psychological factors )

Answer 4

When an individual believes that someone else will take responsibility for their actions

Therefore, agency theory is the idea that people are more likely to
obey when they are in the agentic state as they do not believe they will suffer the
consequences of those actions.

Question 5

Legitimacy of authority

Answer 5

This describes how credible the figure of authority is. People are
more likely to obey them if they are seen as credible in terms of being morally good/right,
and legitimate q

Question 6

Fscale

Answer 6

Measures fascist tendencies
- created by Adorno who used 2000 middle class Americans
- found that those who scored highly on the F scale were status conscious and had an authoritarian personality

Question 6

Authoritarian personality

Answer 6

Refers to individual who are submissive to authority and expect everyone to do the same

• Stems from harsh and strict parenting
• Scrape goating

Question 6

Limitations of the F scale

Answer 6

— There are serious methodological issues associated with the F-scale, as suggested by
Greenstein. This scale is particularly susceptible to acquiscence bias, which describes the
phenomenon of respondents always responding in the same way using the scales provided,
regardless of the content shown in the scales. Therefore, this suggests that the findings
produced by the F-scale may be lacking in validity and reliability.

Question 7

Limitations of the AP

Answer 7

Little ecologival valdity
-because it cannot explain many
real-life examples of mass obedience. For example, it is very unlikely that the whole German
population during Nazi occupation had an Authoritarian Personality, but rather many shared
the same struggles in life and displaced their fear about the future onto a perceived ‘inferior’
group of people, through the process of scapegoating. This means that such a theory is a
limited explanation for some examples of obedience.

Individual differences
- Research by middendorp and melon has found that less educated people are more likely than well educated people to display AP characteristics