Obedience - situational variables

Question 1

Situational variables

Answer 1

Features of immediate physical + social environment which may influence a person’s behavior
* Proximity
* Location
* Uniform

Question 2

Teacher + learner in same room

Proximity - basic

Answer 2

• Baseline - different rooms
• Proximity - learner + teacher same room
• Obedience rate - drops from original 65% to 40%

Question 3

Touch Proximity

Answer 3

• Learner will put hand on ‘electroshock plate’ if gave wrong ans
• If unwilling the teacher will force the hand onto the plate
• obedience drops further 30%

Question 4

Remote instruction proximity

Answer 4

• experimenter leaves room + give instructions to the teacher by phone
• Obedience reduces to 20.5%
• The pps also frequently pretended to give shocks

Question 5

Proximity - explanation

Answer 5

Decreasing proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions
* if they were physically separated (baseline) - the teacher is less aware of the harm they were causing to another person so were more obedient

Question 6

Yale Uni –> run down office

Location

Answer 6

• Milgram - moves the study to a run-down office block rather than Yale Uni (prestigious) - locations drops to 47.5%

Question 7

Location - explanation

Answer 7

• The uni gave M’s study legitimacy + authority
• Pps more obedient in this location as they percieved that the Experimenter also shared this legitimacy + the obedience was expected
• BUT odience still quite high in office block as the pps percieved the ‘scientific’ nature of the procedure

Question 8

Uniform

Answer 8

• Baseline - experimenter wearing lab coat (a symbol of their authority)
• Here experimenter called away by phone call at the start of procedure and so the role was taken over by an ‘ordinary member of the public’ (confed) in everyday clothes instead of lab coat
• Obedience - falls to 20% (the lowest of these variations)

Question 9

Uniform - explanation

Answer 9

Uniforms** encourage obedience** as its widely recognised as symbols of authority. We accept someone in uniform is entitled to expect obedience because their authortiy is legitimate.
* We believe them to have more knowledge than us –> obedience

Question 10

Limitation

EVAL: Artificial situation + task

Answer 10

• Paricipants may have known that they were in a research study + simply go along with what is expected (demand characteristics)
• Susan fiske (2014) - ‘Asch’s groups were not very groupy’ - they did not really resemble groups that we experience in everyday life - the findings do not generalise to real-world situations, especially those where the consequences of conformity might be important

Question 11

Limitation

EVAL: Limited application

Answer 11

• The pps were American men
• Other research suggest women = more conformist - concerned about social relationhsips + being accepted (Neto 1995)
• The US is more individualist culture - more concerned about themselves rather than their social group
• In collectivists culture (social more important than individual) e.g. China - conformity rates are higher

Question 12

Strength

EVAL: Research support

Answer 12

• Support from other studies for the effects of task difficulty
• Todd Lucas et al (2006) - asked their pps to do ‘easy’ + ‘hard’ math problems.
• Pps given answ from 3 other students (fake) –> pps conformed (agreed with wrong ans) more when ques were harder
• Shows Asch was correct in claiming - task difficulty affects conformity

Question 13

Counter to research support

Answer 13

• Lucas et al - conformity is complex - pps with higher confidence in their math abilities conformed less on hard tasks than those with low confidence
• Shows an individual-level factor can influence conformity by interacting situational variables