Social Influence

Question 1

Outline and evaluate 1 or more explanations of obedience (AO1)

Answer 1

• Agentic State - feel intense anxiety but feel powerless to disobey, dependant on place in social hierarchy
  - binding factors= aspects which allow them to reduce the moral strain such as shifting blame to the victim
• Legitimacy of Authority - legimate as it is agreed by society, hand over control and give up independence
  - destructuve authority (HItler) - poweful leaders use powers by ordering people to behave cruelly - demonstrated by Milgram

Question 2

Outline and evaluate 1 or more explanations of obedience (AO3)

Answer 2

• Blass and Schmitt - students blamed the experimenter for the harm to Mr Wallace
• Limited explanation - why did some not obey?
• Cultural differences- Kilham and Mann -Australia-only 16% went to top voltage, but Mantell-Germany- 85%

Question 3

Discuss the Authoritarian Personality as an explanation of obedience (AO1)

Answer 3

• Adorno et al - 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes to other racial groups. F-scale, eg.homosexuals aren’t better than criminals and should be punished
  - found that people with authoritarian leanings (high f-scale score) identified with strong people and were contemptous of the weak, also had fixed stereotypes, strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
  -Characteristics = submissive to authority, extreme respect, absolute loyalty, conditional love
  -Origin = childhood as a result of harsh parenting
  = displacement of resentment of parents placed onto others seen as weaker (minorities), aka scapegoating

Question 4

Discuss the Authoritarian Personality as an explanation of obedience (AO3)

Answer 4

• Correlation not causation
• Political bias- F-scale measures extreme right wing ideology
• Limited explanation- whole of Germany can’t have had the same personality type and yet majority followed the nazis