obedience

Question 1

what is obedience?

Answer 1

a form of social influence that involves performing an action under the orders of an authority figure

Question 2

why do some people obey? describe this by looking at eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil

Answer 2

• drawn to the nazi party
• not because of aspects of personality but because of a strong desire to want to belong to a larger organisation and a strong desire to want to be led

Question 3

why do we blindly follow orders from those in authority?

Answer 3

-obey the command of an authority figure:
- the requester has a higher status
- the requester monitors the behaviour of the requester
- requester may not want to do what they are being told to do but obey anyway

Question 4

explain the study Obedience to authority - stanley milgram (1963, 1974)

Answer 4

• participants attended a laborotory and being met by a figure that looked authoritative (lab coat, clipboard etc)
• participants were told that the aim of the study was to see the effect that punishment had on learning
• the participants were ‘randomly’ chosen to be the learner and teacher (confederate was actually always assigned as a learner)
• learner had to put a word pair correctly in order to pass the test without getting shocked
• results: 62.5% administered shocks to the highest level
• the mere social authority of experimenter produced this result
• however, when the learner was in complete separate room - not seen or heard: 100% shock limit

Question 5

what was the situational factors in obedience in milgrams obedience to authority study?

Answer 5

the immediacy of victim:
- when the learner was not visible but you could hear them = 62% shock to the limit
- when the learner was not seen or heard = 100% sock to the limit
- when the learner was visible in the same room = 40% shock to the limit
- when the teacher physically presses learner’s hand to electrode = 30% shock to the limit

Question 6

what was the controversy surrounding milgram’s experiment?

Answer 6

• although participants were free to withdraw from study at any time, the purpose of the experiment was to discourage this
• participants did not give informed consent - they were deceived as to the purpose of the study