Lesson 5: obedience Flashcards
What is obedience?
A direct form of social influence where the individual has less choice to give way
What was the procedure of Milgram’s study?
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
What was Milgram’s aim?
To investigate how far individuals would go in obeying authority
What was Milgram’s research method?
Lab experiment
What were Milgram’s results?
- 65% complied with maximum voltage
- 35% refused to continue before maximum
- participants were visibly stressed
What was Milgram’s conclusion?
Peoples are highly likely to follow orders from authority even when it’s conflicting with their views
How many variations of the study were there?
5
What happens when learner and teacher are seated in the same room?
Obedience drops by 40%, teachers sees pain inflicted
What happens when researcher is giving telephone orders instead of in the room?
Obedience drops by 21%
What happens when 1 real participant and 2 confederates share the task together?
When confederates back out almost all participants do aswell, only 40% administered max shock
What happens when teacher can chose shock level given?
Only 1/40 participants gave maximum
What was the difference in male and female obedience?
- No difference found but women were showing more signs of stress
- Implies sex isn’t a major factor in obedience to authority
Was the study Generalisable?
No
- sample bias: participants were 20-50 predominantly white middle class men
- artificial environment
- volunteer sample: may not represent general population
Was the study Reliable?
Yes
- controlled settings: no external variables
- reproducibility: variations of study conducted
Was the study Applicable?
Yes
- relevant to understanding holocaust
No
- artificial setting so may not reflect real life
Was the study Valid?
- high internal validity due to controlled design
- weak ecological and external validity
Was the study ethical?
No
- psychological harm
- deception
What are real life applications of Milgram’s study?
- Nazi Germany military
Who agreed with Milgram’s study and why?
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
What is an Authoritarian personality?
- Personality susceptible to obeying people in authority
- Such individuals are also thought to be more submissive to those with higher status
What characteristics does an authoritarian person have?
- respect and obedience to those in authority
- believe in aggression to those who don’t have same beliefs
- blind allegiance
What was Adorno’s aim?
To investigate psychological roots of prejudice which can lead to authoritarian attitudes
What was Adorno’s procedure?
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
What were Adorno’s findings?
- 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
What was Adorno’s conclusion?
Individuals with authoritarian personalities have certain personality traits which are more likely to adopt authoritarian attitudes
What does Latené believe?
- every person is potentially a source or target of social influence.
- 3 rules or laws at work:
- Social force
- Psychological law
- Divisions of impact
Explain social force
- Pressure that gets put on people to change their behaviour
- Generated by persuasion, threat or embarrassment
- Made up of strength, intimacy or numbers
Explain what is meant by strength, intimacy and numbers
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
Explain psychological law
- Idea that first source of influence has most dramatic impact
- 2nd,3rd,4th etc sources generate less and less force
Explain division of impact
- 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
