Factors Affecting Obedinece - Personality And Gender Factors Flashcards
Define personality
An individuals characteristic, coherent, and relatively stable set of behaviours, attitudes, interests, and capabilities. These characteristics are useful for predicting future behaviour
Explain authoritarian personality
Adorno, a researcher, believed that some people are more obedient based on their disposition. Using empirical research, the F-scale Test was designed to measure authoritarian personality, trying to demonstrate that some people are more obedient than others
Authoritarian personality is fostered by parent-child relationships that are hierarchical and exploitative.
Parents will have a psychological need for domination and will threaten their child into compliance and obedience.
Strength for authoritarian personality: supportive evidence from elms and milgram (1966)
There is research support for authoritarian personality by Elms and Milgram (1966). 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. This demonstrates that obedience levels can be linked to personality factors.
What is correlation?
A mutual connection between two or more things. It means that there is no direct cause and effect link between those two items
Explain positive, negative, and no correlation
• Positive - the point lies close to the straight line, which has a positive gradient. This shows that as one variable increases the other increases. E.g. positive correlation between GPA and SAT scores
• Negative - the point lies close to a straight line, which has a negative gradient. This shows that as one variable increases, the other decreases. E.g. negative correlation between self-esteem and depression
• Zero correlation - there is no latter to the points. This shows that there is no correlation between the two variables. E.g. zero correlation between amount of tea drank and the level of intelligence
Define internal locus of control
Someone with a high internal locus of control would believe that they are personally the ones in control.
They tend to take more responsibility for their actions
Define external locus of control
Someone with a high external locus of control would believe that they have no control over the world. That it is external factors and chance factors that lead to their behaviour. They tend to take less responsibility and blame others more for their actions.-
Evaluate a strength of locus of control (with supportive evidence)
A strength of locus of control as a dispositional explanation of obedience, is Oliner and Oliner’s
(1998) supportive research. 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. 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 supportive evidence)
A weakness is the contradictory evidence by Schurz (1985), which instructed participants to give painful doses of ultrasound to a female student. 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.
This suggests that some personality traits may have little impact on obedience.
Explain Moral reasoning (Gillian 1982)
• moral decision making is guided by differing principles in men and women
Men
—> ethics of justice: pertains to the values of fairness and justice; requires a dethatched outlook to avoid bias
Women
—> ethics of justice: pertains to the values of interpersonal relationships; nurturing and supporting those in need
Explain destructive obedience in terms of gender
• Men: will be more obedient due to feelings of obligation to the authority
• Women: will be less obedient due to a desire to support the person from being harmed
Evaluate a strength of gender differences explaining obedience (with supportive evidence)
A strength of gender differences explaining obedience is supportive evidence by Gilligan and Attanucci (1988) on moral dilemmas.
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).
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 supportive evidence)
A weakness is the contradictory evidence by Burger (2009)
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
This suggests that gender may not be an influential factor in determining obedience levels
