Factors affecting obedience and dissent: individual differences (personality and gender) (AO1 - description) Flashcards
Personality factors
What did Adorno et al. (1950) believe about an authoritarian personality?
A harsh style of parenting leads children to develop personality traits such as toughness, destructiveness and cynicism. He measured this using the F-scale (F for facism)
What did Theodor Adorno et al. believe about Germans in the early 20th century?
Harsh parenting was common in Germany in the 20th century
Thus Germans were more likely to be submissive to authority
A more permissive style of parenting, centred around unconditional love…
Might mean that children grow into adults who score low on the F-scale and will show resistance and defy destructive orders.
Who proposed the idea of locus of control?
Rotter (1966)
Internal LOC?
Take greater responsibility for their actions as they believe they’re in control of what they do and what happens to them. They are likely to show dissent and defy orders.
External LOC?
Take less responsibility for their actions and feel what happens to them is governed by other people and by chance factors. They are likely to be obedient.
____ are more likely to show dissent and defy orders
Internals
____ are more likely to be obedient
Externals
How does Miller (1975) demonstrate Locus of Control?
In a study where a high or low-status experimenter told participants to grasp live electric wires.
Externals obeyed the high-status experimenter more than the low-status experimenter, while internals were unaffected by status.
Who did the experiment on electrocuting puppies?
Sheridan and King (1972)
To find out if women are more obedient than men
How many men and women electrocuted the puppies?
100% of women and 54% of males.
Men and women’s reaction to experiment?
Women in grave distress and men were more defiant.
In which study were males more defiant?
Males were more defiant in the puppy study (Sheridan and King 1972), (with puppy target), than males in Milgrams study (human target)
Who replicated Milgram’s study in Australia to find whether men or women are more obedient?
Kilham and Mann (1974)
What did Kilham and Mann (1974) find?
Found an unusually low obedience rate of 28%
- 40% of males were obedient whereas
only 16% of females were fully obedient.
Moral reasoning
Who suggested that moral decision-making is guided by different principles in men and women?
Gilligan (1982)
What is the ‘ethic of justice’?
This principle is more commonly seen in males
and this pertains to the values of equality and fairness
and it requires a detached outlook to avoid bias.
What is the ‘ethic of care’?
Gilligan claimed that females use this to guide their decision-making.
emphasizes interpersonal relationships and nurturing and supporting those in need.
What does Gilligan think about destructive obedience?
One might expect males to be more obedient due to their feelings of obligation to an authority figure,
whereas females may be less obedient due to their desire to support the person being harmed.
Apply Gilligan thoughts about destructive obedience to Milgram’s study.
Males may be more swayed by the apparent scientific goals of the research, which was supposedly for ‘the greater good’
whereas females may have been more concerned about the learner.
What is locus of control? (locus betekent plaats in het Latijn)
Refers to the extent to which individuals believe they can control events affecting them.
Someone’s locus is either ___ or _____
internal (they believe they have some control over events in their life)
or external (they believe that life is determined by environmental factors they cannot influence)
