Factors affecting obedience - personality and gender factors (SP) Flashcards
Evaluate a strength for authoritarian personality: using supportive evidence
I - There is research support for authoritarian personality by Elms and Milgram (1966).
J - They found that when comparing 20 fully obedient participants in Milgram’s studies against 20 disobedient participants, the obedient participants had significantly higher authoritarian personality scores on the F-scale as compared to the disobedient participants.
E - This demonstrates that obedience levels can be linked to personality factors.
Evaluate a strength of locus of control (with supportive evidence)
I - A strength of locus of control as a dispositional explanation of obedience, is Oliner and Oliner’s
(1998) supportive research.
J - Interviewing non-Jewish survivors of WWll who had resisted orders and protected Jews from the Nazi’s in comparison to those who had not. Oliner and Oliner found that 406 ‘rescuers’, who had resisted orders, were more likely to have a high internal locus of control, in comparison to the 126 people who had simply followed orders.
E - This suggests that some personality traits did have an impact on the level of obedience of individuals.
Evaluate a weakness of locus of control (with contradictory evidence)
I - A weakness is the contradictory evidence by Schurz (1985), which instructed participants to give painful doses of ultrasound to a female student.
J - The findings showed that those participants who were fully obedient did not significantly differ from those participants who resisted in terms of their scores on a questionnaire measuring locus of control.
E - This suggests that some personality traits may have little impact on obedience.
Evaluate a strength of gender differences explaining obedience (with supportive evidence)
I - A strength of gender differences explaining obedience is supportive evidence by Gilligan and Attanucci (1988) on moral dilemmas.
J - They found men and women differed in terms of their concerns. Men were more preoccupied with fairness, whereas women more concerned about care avoiding harm and exploitation, prioritising relationships rather than rules and principles).
E - This suggests that these differences in concerns could mean that women will be less obedient in tasks that require harming others.
Evaluate a weakness of gender differences affecting obedience (with contradictory evidence)
I - A weakness is the contradictory evidence by Burger (2009)
J - Burger conducted an experiment with 29 men and 41 women, has asked them to deliver shocks to an “innocent person” (confederate). The findings showed no significant difference between the levels of obedience between men and women
E - This suggests that gender may not be an influential factor in determining obedience levels
