social influence deck Flashcards
Key features of authoritarian personality
- rigid beliefs in traditional values
- submission to authority
- hostility to those with lower power
- general hostility and prejudice to other grps ie minorities
Who used the F scale and when?
Adorno 1950
What affects authoritarianism in childhood?
growing up with very harsh parents who used disciplines such as physical punishment and were part of particular social groups.
What is right-wing authoritarianism?
cluster of personality variables ( conentionalism, authority submission and authoritarian aggression) associated with RW attitude to life
Who tested relationship between RWA and obedience ? When ?
Robert Altemayer in 1981
What was Robert Altemayer’s study ?
participants had to give themselves electric shocks when they made mistakes on a learning task
was a sig correlation between RWA levels and shock intensities participants would give themselves.
What was Elms and Milgram’s study?
used same participants from Milgram’s OG electric shock experiment.
selected 20 “obedient” ps and 20 “defiant” ps from exp and measured their levels of authoritarianism using F scale.
also were asked open ended questions on their relationship with parents and their attitude to experimenter and learner
What were the findings of Elms and Milgram’s study ?
higher levels of authoritarianism between participants classified as obedience.
also found that obedient participants had more neg attitudes to fathers and viewed the experimenter ( authority figure) in an admirable light.
What study did Dambrune and Vatime carry out in 2010 ?
carried out electric shock experiment
in which participants were informed that in the virtual simulation participants weren’t ACC being shocked
still amongst pss tendency to respond as tho situation was real. this eliminates suspicion that considerations of shocks being fake in M’s OG exp influenced obedience levels
Why did Milgram not think the evidence was very strong for dispositional basis of obedience ?
by varying his OG experiment changing proximity, location, uniform etc showed that these were the main causes of differences in obedience levels.
How was education shown to influence obedience ?
- education ( lower levels) participants who had lower education tended to be more obedient. suggests that lack of education may be responsible for authoritarianism and obed
Who discovered support for left-wing views being associated with lower obedience levels ?
Begue et al 2014. Fake game show where contestants gave electric shocks to other contestants.
interviews following this revealed that the more LW participants classified themselves, the lower the shock intensity they agreed to give
Who found that social support would help to resist conformity ? How was this demonstrated
Asch 1956
introduction of an ally who gave the right answer resisting majority caused conformity levels to drop from 33% - 5.5%
How did one of Milgram’s variations show that social support helped to resist obedience ?
particpant was one in a team of three testing a learner. the other two were confeds - refused one after other to keep shocking learner
had a liberating effect on real p - only 10% of ps now continued to max- 450V
What does locus of control refer to ?
a person’s perception of personal control over their own behaviour
What differentiates people who have a strong internal vs strong ext locus of control ?
- strong internal locus of control: belief that we cssn control events that happen in our life. less reliable on ops of others so easier resistance to SI
- strong ext LoC tend to believe what happens to them is determ by luck/fate. more likely to accept influence of others
What characteristics do high internals tend to have which help them resist SI ?
- active seekers of info that is useful to them helps them esp resist informational SI
- Spector (1982) found that relationship exists betw locus of control and leadership style ( persuasion and goal orientated)
- better at resisting coercion. shown in simulated prison of war camp situation, internals better able to resist attempts of interrogator to gain info
What did Allen and Levie uncover in 1969 ?
studied whether response position of person providing social support made any difference to p resisting majority.
found it was a lot more effective when confed gave right answer first in the group rather than just before unknowing p.
What did Holland find in 1967 ?
found that participants with an internal locus of control more able to resist obed in milgramesque proced.
63% of internals obeyed to highest shock level compared to 77% of externals.
Why was viewing internal locus of control as desirable described as ethnocentric ?
Dyal 1984 suggested that for certain cultures with beliefs in karm acceptance of ones’s helplessness to control life’s problems is crucial/ part of the philosophy.
People now have a more external locus of control than they used to have
Twenge et al 2004 conducted meta analysis over 40 year period found that Americans have become more resistant to obedience but also more external in their locus of control
this is contradicting to concept of the more ext your LoC, the higher your display of obed behav.
