Obedience (Social Influence) Flashcards
Obedience
A type of social influence which causes a person to act in response to an order given by another person. The person who gives the order is usually a figure of authority who has the power to punish when obedient behaviour is not forthcoming.
Method 1 (Milgram 1963 Obedience to authority)
Laboratory experiments to test factors thought to affect obedience. Tested wether people would obey orders to shock someone in a separate room.
The payment they received was not sensitive to wether or not they proceeded with the experiment.
Each participant was introduced to a confederate acting like a participant.
They drew lots to see who would act as teacher and learner but this was fixed so that the participant would always be the teacher.
Method 2 (Milgram 1963 Obedience to authority)
The participant sees the confederate being strapped to a chair and connected to a shock generator. It didn’t really give electric shocks but the participants thought it was real.
The participants taught the learner word-pairs over an intercom. When the learner answered incorrectly, the participant had to administer an increasing level of shock.
After the 300V shock, the learner pounded on the wall and gave no further response. Participants were told to continue.
Results + Conclusion (Milgram 1963 Obedience to authority)
Results:
65% administered 450V and none stopped before administering 300V.
Most participants showed obvious signs of stress like sweating, groaning and trembling.
Conclusion: Ordinary people will obey orders to hurt someone else even if it means acting against their conscience.
Situational variables in Milgram’s studies (Location and Uniform)
-Location: originally done in Yale university (quite prestigious)
was changed to a run down office down town. obedience decrease
-Uniform: the researchers originally wore a grey lab coat. obedience dropped to 20% when they were not dressed like a scientist
Situational variables in Milgram’s studies (Proximity)
-Proximity: When the teacher and learner were in the same room, participants going to max voltage dropped from 65% in the baseline study to 40%.
touch proximity, where teachers had to force the learner’s hand onto an electroshock plate, obedience dropped to 30%
remote proximity, when teachers were being instructed by researchers by telephone the obedience rate dropped to 20.5%. participants in this condition would pretend to give shocks or give weaker shocks than they’d been told to
Agentic state
a mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure, for example, as their agent. This frees us from the demands of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure
Legitimacy of authority
an explanation for obedience which suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us. This authority is justified by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy.
Autonomous state
means to be free or independent. Free to behave in accordance to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions
agentic shift
a shift from a state of autonomy to the agentic state
Binding factors in Milgram’s experiment
reluctance to disrupt the experiment- obligation
pressure of the surroundings- legitimate authority
-insistence of the authority figure
who might be a legitimate authority?
-somebody that is seen to be in a position of social control
-their power stems from their perceived opinion in the social situation
There is a shared expectation among people that there will be a leader
participants in Milgram’s experiment entered the laboratory expecting somebody to be in charge
Hofling 1966
Nurses received a phone call from an unknown doctor while they were alone. They were instructed to prescribe 20mg of an unknown drug.
21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the order.
We can conclude that, with no other influences, we are likely to obey authority figures
Rank and Jacobson 1977
Nurses were given an order, from a doctor they knew, over the phone while other nurses were present. They were told to prescribe triple the regular dose of valium, a drug which they knew of which is known to be dangerous in high doses.
Only 2 out of 18 Nurses prescribed the drug, showing that people are less likely to obey authority figures when there is another influence which they agree with. The surrounding nurses would have expressed concern.
Bickman 1974
Members of the public were asked by an experimenter to do something. Tested the ecological validity of Milgram’s work.
When the experimenter wore no uniform, fewer people obeyed
When the experimenter wore a milkman uniform, more obeyed than when there was no uniform
when they wore a guard’s uniform, the most people obeyed.
People are more likely to obey who they perceive as an authority figure.
