Obedience to Authority

Question 1

What is obedience to authority?

Answer 1

A type of social influence that involves an individual following a direct order, usually from an authority figure and usually in order to avoid punishment

Question 2

What did Hofling do?

Answer 2

Arranged with hospitals to ring a nurse and pretend to be a Doctor, the nurses were working alone

Question 3

What would Hofling ask?

Answer 3

The nurse to give a 20mg dosage of a drug, exceeding the 10mg maximum

Question 4

What rules would administering the drug break?

Answer 4

• Nurse should not take orders over the phone
• Should not take orders from unknown doctor
• Drug not on the ward list
• Dosage was twice the maximum dosage stated

Question 5

What were Hofling’s findings?

Answer 5

21 out of 22 nurses obeyed his orders (95%)

Question 6

What are 2 evaluation points of Holfing’s study?

Answer 6

• High ecological validity: natural feed experiment, no demand characteristics
• Ethical issues: deception

Question 7

What did Rank and Jacobson criticise?

Answer 7

The realism of Hofling’s study as there were a number of threats to the ecological validity

Question 8

What were the threats of the ecological validity?

Answer 8

• The use of an unknown drug
• The order coming from an unknown Dr Smith
• The nurses were alone

Question 9

What did Rank and Jacobson do?

Answer 9

Replicated this field experiment, but instead using a known doctor and a familiar drug, nurse were allowed to consult with other nurses. Only 2 out of 18 obeyed