Obedience Flashcards
What are the 4 situational variables affecting obedience?
- Proximity of victim
- Proximity of attacker
- Uniform
- Location
How does legitimacy of authority explain obedience?
Growing up in social hierarchies leads ppl to percieve anyone above them in a social hierarcy to be a legit authority
How does Milgram’s agency theory explain obedience?
- Someone may feel moral strain but they may make an agentic shift
- Agentic shift = shift from autonomous –> agentic state
shift from being responsible of yourself to being an agent to someone else
How does Adorno’s authoritarian personality theory explain obedience?
- This personality is a result of strict parenting
- It makes a person strict, aggressive, and overly respectful of authority but cruel to those beneath them in hierarchy
The agency theory doesn’t account for some people being naturally obedient
This is a dispositional explanation
How did Adorno measure authoritarian personality types?
The F (fascism) scale on which many Nazi war criminals recieved very high
- however some of them didn’t so it isn’t perfect
What did Milgram do to test obedience?
- Milgram decieved ppts telling them it was a learning study but it was actually about obedience
- The confederate played the learner
- The teacher was the participant
- The ppt had to give electric shocks of increasing strength
- The confederate appears to be in pain and/or dead
What were the results of the Milgram study?
450 volts - 65%
300 volts - 100%
Although there was resistance they still obeyed
What were Milgram’s additional experiments?
- Seeing the learner in distress = proximity of the victim
65% –> 40% - Study occurs in run down building (not Yale) = location
65% - 47.5% - Teacher is on the phone (not in person) = proximity from the authority figure
65% - 23% - Teacher is a plain clothed layman (not a lab coat) = uniform
65% - 20%
Yale is respected and professors are highly respected therefore legitimacy increases
How can we evaluate the Milgram experiment?
- Lab experiment controls EVs
can establish cause and effect - They may have known the shocks were fake
Experiment may have suffered demand characteristics. This is not possible as there were serious emotional reactions - Lacks ecological validity
weird, unpredictable situation, cant generalise IRL - Lacks population validity
Adult, middle class, white and american. Andro centric bias and ungeneralisable - Unethical
Benefits outweigh costs?
Why was Milgram’s study unethical?
- Ppts recieved psychological harm such as distress and seizures
ANS; ‘only 2% regretted participation’ - Ppts were deceived, no informed consent
ANS; ‘they were debriefed tho’ - No right to withdraw
ANS; ‘35 ppts did withdraw’
How does Milgram’s study support the legitimacy of authority explanation for obedience?
- His alt experiments showed that uniform and location increased legitimacy of authority which increases obedience.
this theory ignores indivudal variables!!
How does Milgram’s study support the agency theory explanation for obedience?
- ppts experienced distress when told to shock the man ie moral strain
- Ppts were more likely to obey when researcher took responsibility ie agentic shift
- more likely to obey when they are further away from the victim ie they cannot view the consequences and so cant feel responsibility
the agency theory doesnt account for individual variables that cause increased obedience eg gender
Evaluate the support of Adorno’s authoritarian personality explanation
- Some ARE more likely to obey than others because of individual variables
- Milgram found high score on the F scale did lead to higher levels of obedience
Evaluate the limitations of Adorno’s authoritarian personality explanation
- Doesn’t account for situational variables
- Does not explain all cases of obedience eg some nazi criminals did not score highly
- Cant establish a cause and effect relationship
- Authoritarian personality types have low levels of education which could be another factor
