Factors Affecting Obedience: Situational And Cultural Factors

Question 1

What are situational factors?

Answer 1

Factors dependent on the circumstances

Question 2

Give examples of situational factors.

Answer 2

Legitimate environmental
Proximity (closeness)

Question 3

What are Cultural Factors?

Answer 3

Factors linked to one’s culture

Question 4

What is individualism?

Answer 4

• Focuses on the rights and concerns of each peon.
• Valued characteristics are independence and personal identity. More resistant to compliance.
• Those in individualistic cultures might describe themselves in terms of personality traits and characteristics (e.g., “I am smart, funny, athletic, and kind”)

Question 5

What is collectivism?

Answer 5

• Stresses the importance of the community and one’s group.
• Valued characteristics: unity and selflessness or altruism. Cooperation and compliance for the stability of the group
• Those from collectivist cultures would more likely describe themselves in terms of their social relationships and roles (e.g., “I am a good parent, sibling, and friend”).

Question 6

What is Power Distance?

Answer 6

The measure of how accepting people are of inequality and hierarchy in society.

Question 7

Describe a high power distance culture.

Answer 7

A culture that is accepting of hierarchy and inequality. Where there is a dependent relationship with the authority

Question 8

Strength of cultural explanations for obedience

Answer 8

Cultural dimensions do correlate with obedience A strength of cultural explanations is a close relationship between obedience and Hofstede’s cultural dimension.

For example. Kilham and Mann (1974) found a strikingly low level of obedience of 28% in Australia. which scores very low for power distance (36%) while a very recent replication in Poland by Dolinski et al. (2017) found a very high level of obedience of 90% as one might expect in a country with a much higher power distance score of 68%.

This suggests that Hofstede’s power distance dimension is useful in predicting obedience.

Question 9

Weakness of cultural explanations for obedience.

Answer 9

Most nations around the world show similar high levels of obedience.

Blass (2012) found an average of 65.94% obedience across other countries, compared with 60.94% for the US replications. These countries varied in terms of their collectivism and individualism levels, but the average obedience levels were quite similar.

Therefore we can conclude that perhaps obedience is in fact a universal social behaviour and culture doesn’t affect it much.