Factors Affecting Obedience and Dissent: Situation and Culture Flashcards
Situation: Legitimacy
Reducing perceived legitimacy of the authority figure by altering mode of dress, for example, can reduce obedience.
Reducing the prestige or status of the venue also leads to reductions in obedience.
Situation: Proximity
When distance between authority figure and participant is increased, obedience reduces, as seen in telephonic instructions.
Situation: Behaviour of Others
Exposure to role models who are disobedient decreases obedience. M’s experiment 17 there were 2 further teachers (confederates) who refused to carry on.
Obedience dropped 10% showing how the presence of others may affect obedience.
Culture: Hofstede
Identified 6 dimensions, which allow for comparisons between countries with regard to cultural values.
Two of which have possible links to obedience.
Culture: Individualism-Collectivism
Individualistic Cultures - Value personal autonomy and self reliance.
Collectivist Cultures - Value loyalty to the group, interdependence and cooperation in pursuit of group goals.
People from more INDV cultures like US may be less obedient due to the value placed on self-determination and independence;
compared to COLL like China, where obligation and duty may override sense to rebel.
Culture: Power Distance Index
Refers to how accepting people are of hierarchical order and inequality in society
In high PDI cultures ‘subordinates expect to be told what to do and the ideal boss is a benevolent autocrat’ - Hofstede.
People low on this dimension are likely to show resistance or dissent.
Situation: Support
Evidence shows how legitimacy, proximity and the behaviours of others affect obedience.
Meeus and Raajmakers asked PP to deliver increasingly unkind insults to a confederate who was applying to a job.
More than 90% delivered all 15 insults in baseline condition; 36% when experimenter left room and 16% when witnessing two rebellious stooges as in Mil’s ex.17
Suggests that it is possible to reduce obedience significantly through adjusting aspects of a situation.
Situation: Competing
In all of Milgram’s variations there were individual differences - some refused to continue to higher shock levels despite the situational pressures. Shows that personality must be a key part of the explanation.
Situation: Application
Research on situational factors and obedience has been applied to improve compliance with countryside rules.
In the CS there is no one to enforce rules therefore some people disobey (seen in Milgram), threatening wildlife and nature.
Gramann et al. found that if info was provided about the reasoning behind the rules then PP more likely to obey.
Signs provide immediacy without an authority figure, and strength as they indicate the power that could be brought.
Strength: Culture
Close relationship between obedience and Hofstede’s cultural dimension, PDI.
Kilham and Mann found a low level of obedience of 28% in Australia, which scores 36% on PDI.
In Poland, Dolinski et al. found a vert high level of obedience of 90% and Poland has a 68% PDI.
Suggests that PDI is useful in predicting obedience.
Weakness: Culture
Most nations around the world return similarly high levels of obedience.
Blass calculated the avg obedience rate for eight non-US Milgram replications finding an overall of 66% compared with an avg of 61% for US replications.
Bass concludes that perhaps obedience is in fact a universal social behaviour and culture doesn’t affect obedience much.
