Lesson 5: obedience

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

A direct form of social influence where the individual has less choice to give way

Question 2

What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?

Answer 2

1) recruited through newspaper ad
2) participants assigned to”teacher” confederate assigned to “learner”
3) participants sat infront of fake shock machine with switches lacked “ slight shock” to “danger shock”
4) participants given word pair memory test to learner
5) researcher told participants to shock learner if they got it wrong ( increasing voltage each time)
6) learner acts like they’re in pain
7) if participants hesitate researcher prompts them
8) experiment ends when machines maxed or when participants refuse to continue
9) debrief

Question 3

What was Milgram’s aim?

Answer 3

To investigate how far individuals would go in obeying authority

Question 4

What was Milgram’s research method?

Answer 4

Lab experiment

Question 5

What were Milgram’s results?

Answer 5

• 65% complied with maximum voltage
• 35% refused to continue before maximum
• participants were visibly stressed

Question 6

What was Milgram’s conclusion?

Answer 6

Peoples are highly likely to follow orders from authority even when it’s conflicting with their views

Question 7

How many variations of the study were there?

Answer 7

5

Question 8

What happens when learner and teacher are seated in the same room?

Answer 8

Obedience drops by 40%, teachers sees pain inflicted

Question 9

What happens when researcher is giving telephone orders instead of in the room?

Answer 9

Obedience drops by 21%

Question 10

What happens when 1 real participant and 2 confederates share the task together?

Answer 10

When confederates back out almost all participants do aswell, only 40% administered max shock

Question 11

What happens when teacher can chose shock level given?

Answer 11

Only 1/40 participants gave maximum

Question 12

What was the difference in male and female obedience?

Answer 12

No difference found but women were showing more signs of stress. Implies sex isn’t a major factor in obedience to authority

Question 13

Was the study Genralisable?

Answer 13

No
- sample bias: participants were 20-50 predominantly white middle class men
- artificial environment
- volunteer sample: may not represent general population

Question 14

Was the study Reliable?

Answer 14

Yes
- controlled settings: no external variables
- reproducibility: variations of study conducted

Question 15

Was the study Applicable?

Answer 15

Yes
- relevant to understanding holocaust
No
- artificial setting so may not reflect real life

Question 16

Was the study Valid?

Answer 16

• high internal validity due to controlled design
• weak ecological and external validity

Question 17

Was the study ethical?

Answer 17

No
- psychological harm
- deception

Question 18

What are real life applications of Milgram’s study?

Answer 18

• Nazi Germany military

Question 19

Who disagreed with Milgram’s study and why?

Answer 19

Hofing et el 1996
- conducted study in hospital
- nurses called by Dr Smith who asked them to give drug to patient with double dosage
- nurses shouldn’t do over the phone orders but 95% did
This shows obedience does happen in real life settings

Question 20

What is an Authoritarian personality?

Answer 20

Personality susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be more submissive to those with higher status

Question 21

What characteristics does an authoritarian person have?

Answer 21

• respect and obedience to those in authority
• believe in aggression to those who don’t have same beliefs
• blind allegiance

Question 22

What was Adorno’s aim?

Answer 22

To investigate psychological roots of prejudice which can lead to authoritarian attitudes

Question 23

What was Adorno’s procedure?

Answer 23

1) 2000 participants selected
2) Adorno and team created questionnaire to measure authoritarian tendencies. Identifies those who have high authoritarian traits
3) collected data
4) some participants were also interviewed by researchers to gain deeper insight into participants attitudes
5) analysis, compared relationship between F scale scores with other variables like prejudice, conservatism, authoritarianism

Question 24

What were Adorno’s findings?

Answer 24

• authoritarian personality traits were correlated with higher levels of prejudice, strict upbringing and high levels of respect for authority
• authoritarian personalities more likely to hold prejudice views regarding racial and ethnic minorities and accepted social hierarchies and traditional views

Question 25

What was Adorno’s conclusion?

Answer 25

Individuals with authoritarian personalities have certain personality traits which are more likely to adopt authoritarian attitudes

Question 26

What does Latené believe?

Answer 26

• every person is potentially a source or target of social influence.
• 3 rules or laws at work:
  
  1. Social force
  2. Psychological law
  3. Divisions of impact

Question 27

Explain social force

Answer 27

• Pressure that gets put on people to change their behaviour
• Generated by persuasion, threat or embarrassment
• Made up of strength, intimacy or numbers

Question 28

Explain what is meant by strength, intimacy and numbers

Answer 28

Strength: how much power you believe the person influencing you has
Intimacy: how recent and close the influence is to you
Numbers: the more people putting pressure on you

Question 29

Explain psychological law

Answer 29

• Idea that first source of influence has most dramatic impact
• 2nd,3rd,4th etc sources generate less and less force

Question 30

Explain division of impact

Answer 30

• Social force gets spread between all people it’s directed at . If all force is on one person it put greater pressure on them to conform