Obedience Flashcards
What is obedience?
This is a form of social influence. Yielding to the real or imagined demands of an authority figure
E.g following orders from a teacher
What is social influence?
When an individual’s behaviour, attitudes and emotions are affected by a real or imagined pressure from another
What is dissent?
Rejecting or disobeying the demands of an authority figure
What is the experiment for obedience?
Milgram (1963)
What is the background to milgrams experiment?
The holocaust
• During World War II the nazi party instructed a mass extermination of millions of Jewish people
‘Germans are different’ hypothesis
• Afterwards many people believed that the nazi soldiers had a basic character flaw that rendered them more obedient to orders from an authority figure, even if the instructions were to kill other people
‘The banality of evil’ by Aredt (1963)
• in her book Arendt described Adolf Eichmann (a nazi lieutenant colonel and organiser of the holocaust) as an uninspired official with a mild mannered nature rather than being a monster
Who is milgram?
• He was born in New York (1933) to Jewish parents
• Milgram’s immediate and extended family were effected by the holocaust
• Survivors of the camps went to go and live with milgram and his family in New York
• PhD in social psychology from Harvard university
• He was known for his controversial experiment on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale
What was the aim of milgram’s experiment?
To investigate wether ordinary people would follow orders and give an innocent person a potentially harmful electric shock
How were participants recruited and what did the participants consist of?
A newspaper advertisement in the local newspaper
Gender: male
NofP: 40
Age: Aged 20-50 years
Payment: $4.50
Occupation: all occupations (excluding students) to apply
What sampling method did milgram use?
Self-selected sample (volunteer sampling) where participants responded to an advertisement
Where did milgram’s study take place?
The study was conducted at yale university in a controlled laboratory setting
What were the participants told at the beginning of the study?
That they could drop out at any point and still receive the money ($4.50)
What does confederate mean?
A person who is secretly part of the experiment but pretends to be a participant
Acts in a predetermined way to manipulate and control the situation
Participants are unaware of the confederate
Who acted as the authority figure in milgram’s study?
Mr Wallace
The experimenter was a likeable man wearing a grey lab coat
What role was assigned to the participant?
The participant was already predetermined to play the role of the teacher
