Factors affecting obedience and dissent: individual differences (personality and gender) (AO1 - description)

Question 1

Personality factors

What did Adorno et al. (1950) believe about an authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

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)

Question 2

What did Theodor Adorno et al. believe about Germans in the early 20th century?

Answer 2

Harsh parenting was common in Germany in the 20th century

Thus Germans were more likely to be submissive to authority

Question 3

A more permissive style of parenting, centred around unconditional love…

Answer 3

Might mean that children grow into adults who score low on the F-scale and will show resistance and defy destructive orders.

Question 4

Who proposed the idea of locus of control?

Answer 4

Rotter (1966)

Question 5

Internal LOC?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

External LOC?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

____ are more likely to show dissent and defy orders

Answer 7

Internals

Question 8

____ are more likely to be obedient

Answer 8

Externals

Question 9

How does Miller (1975) demonstrate Locus of Control?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Who did the experiment on electrocuting puppies?

Answer 10

Sheridan and King (1972)

To find out if women are more obedient than men

Question 11

How many men and women electrocuted the puppies?

Answer 11

100% of women and 54% of males.

Question 12

Men and women’s reaction to experiment?

Answer 12

Women in grave distress and men were more defiant.

Question 13

In which study were males more defiant?

Answer 13

Males were more defiant in the puppy study (Sheridan and King 1972), (with puppy target), than males in Milgrams study (human target)

Question 14

Who replicated Milgram’s study in Australia to find whether men or women are more obedient?

Answer 14

Kilham and Mann (1974)

Question 15

What did Kilham and Mann (1974) find?

Answer 15

Found an unusually low obedience rate of 28%

• 40% of males were obedient whereas

only 16% of females were fully obedient.

Question 16

Moral reasoning

Who suggested that moral decision-making is guided by different principles in men and women?

Answer 16

Gilligan (1982)

Question 17

What is the ‘ethic of justice’?

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

What is the ‘ethic of care’?

Answer 18

Gilligan claimed that females use this to guide their decision-making.

emphasizes interpersonal relationships and nurturing and supporting those in need.

Question 19

What does Gilligan think about destructive obedience?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Apply Gilligan thoughts about destructive obedience to Milgram’s study.

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

What is locus of control? (locus betekent plaats in het Latijn)

Answer 21

Refers to the extent to which individuals believe they can control events affecting them.

Question 22

Someone’s locus is either ___ or _____

Answer 22

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)