obedience Flashcards
Whats meant by obedience
*actimg in direct response to direct order from figure woth perceived authority.
*indi that receives order may respond diff in a way they wouldnt of done without the order.
What caused Milgram to conduct his experiment into obedience
*wanted to understand why such a high proportion of german pop obeyed hitler’s commands to murder over 6 mill jews in holocaust.
*intial hypothesis was that Germans were more obedient than others.
*so tested his hypo using an experiment
What was the aim of Milgram’s exp into obedience
*to investigate of ordinary people would obey orders from authority figures if even lead to neg consequences
Milgram’s sample and method
*sample of 40 US males aged 20-50
*method=laboratory exp in Yale
*volunteer sample= newspaper saying gonna rs memory on learning.
Milgram’s procedure and findings
*drew lots that were rigged. real ppts assigned to teacher and conf was assigned to learner.
*teacher=administrate learning tasks and give shocks if they gave answer wrong.
*shocks started at 15v and went up in increments of 15
Findings:
*every ppts went up to 300v- only 12.5% stopped at 300v
*65% continued to 450v
*ordinary ppl are obedient when asked to ask inhumanely
-not necc evil ppl that commit crimes, but ppl just obeying orders
Situational variables that affect obedience and percentages
*Proximity;
*how near/far teacher was from learner or researcher
*cant see but hear- 65%
*in same room- 40% (could see that behaviour was having a n
negative effect)
*rs gave instructions over phone- 20.5%
closer authority fig, more obedient
Location:
*Yale- 65%– run down office- 48%
*amount of percevied LOA of exp was reduced.
Uniform:
*researcher wore grey lab coat, went out of room, was replaced with member of public with normal clothes.
*obedience dropped to 20%
*uniform acts as a visual authority symbol
*acts as cue to obey- when not in uniform LOA decreases
Proximity as situational variable
*Proximity;
*how near/far teacher was from learner or researcher
*cant see but hear- 65%
*in same room- 40% (could see that behaviour was having a n
negative effect)
*rs gave instructions over phone- 20.5%
closer authority fig, more obedient
Uniform
Uniform:
*researcher wore grey lab coat, went out of room, was replaced with member of public with normal clothes.
*obedience dropped to 20%
*uniform acts as a visual authority symbol
*acts as cue to obey- when not in uniform LOA decreases
Location
Location:
*Yale- 65%– run down office- 48%
*amount of percevied LOA of exp was reduced.
Discuss research into situational variables 16m
Support:
P- Field experiment conducted by Bickman in NY
E-had confederates dress in 3 different outfits- security man, business man, milkman, asked passer-bys to give money for parkin or pick up litter. Ppts were twice as likely to follow instructions of security guard than bussiness man, due to…
L- therefore supporting the power of uniform as a variable affaceting obedience as ppts were more likely to follow the orders from the perceived authority figure, showing the effact of this variable in rl.
Limitations:
P- one limitation of Milgrams experiment is andoctrentic bias
E- this is because his experimental samples were just males and he tried to generalise the findings that people obey due to being given orders by a perceived authority figures to women.
E- this problematic because the results may not be generisable to women as research says women may be more OBEDIENT regardless of sit varibales by Sheridian and King found that when ordered to give electric shocks to a puppy- women obeyed 100% of the time whilst men just obeyed 54%.
L- this therefore limits the studys external validity as his research may not represent obedience across genders.
P- criticided by Mandel
E- Milgram’s research into situational varibles sparked due to wanting to understand why a high proportion of Germans obeyed hitler’s commands to murder Jews, due to his findings he suggests that as proximity decreseas, obedience also decreases however the mass killing of Jews was conductedin close proximity. Milgram also suggests that obedience increases due to presence of uniform that acts as visual cue to obey.
E- Mandel says that this offers an excuse or alibi for evil behaviour, and is seen as offensive to victims of the holocaust to suggest that Nazi’s were just obeying orders and were avictims of situational variables.
L- this therefore limits the appropiatness of rs of sit variables.
*lacks ecological validity- conducted in lab- cant gen
*Participants deceived, so they did not know what they were signing up for : he told them it was a study of learning but it was really a study of obedience + he didn’t tell them that the learner was a confederate pretending to be shocked - therefore, participants couldn’t give informed consent -
milgrim argued however, deception was necessary in order for the experiment to work - if participants knew the true aim of the experiment , participants would behave realistically - how ever, milgrim said that he debriefed his participants at the end of the study, told them the true aim and made sure they’d dint think they harmed anyone.
Ethical issues:
- There was deception and so informed consent could not be
obtained. This deception was justified by the aim of avoiding
demand characteristics/ the ‘Please-U’ effect/ participant reactivity
(where participants change their behaviour in response to knowing
that they are being observed).
- There was psychological harm inflicted upon the participants - They
showed signs of psychological and physiological distress such as
trembling, sweating and nervous laughter.
Why did Milgram decide to conduct research into explanations of obedience
*sparked by Nuremberg trials where german nazi soldiers defended their war crimes by sayig they were just following orders.
What does LOA suggest
-obedient individuals accept tne power and status of authority figures like police officers and teachers
*see them as being in charge
*legitimate= agreed by society
-accept ppls credentials, and believe know what thyere doing.
-ingared to obey these people- even when order may be unethical or unjust
What does agentic state suggest
*Indi move from a state of having sense of responsibility and guilt- autonomous state
*to a state where they believe theyre acting on behalf of authority figure- agentic state. lose sense of responsibility and guilt
*they go thru agentic shift- somepne perceives someone as authority figure
16m into agentic state
Support;
P- RS by Milgrams obedience studies.
E- most of ppts resisted giving shocks at some point and often asked experimenter wuestions like “whos responsible if the learner is harmed” when experimenter said “i am responsible” the ppts continued to obey and give elecric shock.
E- shows that ppts continueddue to losing sense of responsility and guilt towards potentially harming the learner as they belive taht theyre acting on behalf of a more knowledgable authority fig
L- therefore supporting agentic state as an exp.
P- Rs conducted by Hofling
E- Conducted a field experiment with nurses in a hospital ward and called them as an unknown doctor and told ordered them to give a dangerous dose of a drug to patients. Found that 21/22 nurses obeyed despite knowing that thyere not supposed to take orders over the telephone.
E- This thefore supports agentic as nurses lost sense of responsibilty as thinking they just acted on behalf of doctors. (LOA- docs have more authority than nurses, which caused them to follow order as they thought orders were valid)
Limitations;
P- rs to contradict .
E- MANDEL studied Reserve Police Battalion (or just say incident) where german nazi soldiers men obeyed orders to shoot innocnet civilians in a town in Poland despite being told before hand that they cpuld do other duties instead.
E- This contradicts the agentic state explanation, which claims people obey destructive orders because they shift responsibility onto an authority figure, the soldiers acted out of free will, suggesting they were not in an agentic state and could not displace responsibility.
L- Therefore, this real-life example challenges the valifdity of the agentic state as an explanation for obedience, and suggests other factors, such as conformity to peer pressure, or personal values, may play a significant role.
LOA strength
P- strength as exp of obedience is that it can account for cultural differences in obedience levels
E- in some cul authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate.
E- affects how diff societies are structured and children are raised to perceive authority figures. Supported by cross- cult rep of Milgrams studies which found diff in obedience- Australia 16% to 450 v and Germany 85% suggesting that obedience varies depending on how authority is perceived in different cultures.
L- This supports the idea that legitimacy of authority is a culturally valid explanation of obedience and increases the external validity of the theory, as it can be applied across societies.
