Social Influence - Explanations for obedience (Milgram)

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

The change of an individual’s behaviour to comply with a demand by an authority figure

People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if they don’t comply

Question 2

What was Milgram?

Answer 2

A social psychology professor at Yale who was influenced by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal - he wanted to assess the validity of Eichmann saying he was “just following order’’

Question 3

Who did Milgram recruit for his experiment

Answer 3

40 male volunteers who were led to believe that they were participating in a study to improve learning memory.

Question 4

What was the procedure of Milgram’s Experiment (1963)?

Answer 4

1. Participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered electric shocks of different intensities to the learners
2. Participants were told to shock the learners if they gave a wrong answer to test item - that the shock would help them learn
3. Shocks were increased in 15-volt increments up to 450 volts
4. Participants didn’t know that the learners were confederates and that they didn’t actually receive socks

Question 5

What were the results of Milgram’s experiment (1963)?

Answer 5

In response to a string of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently obediently and repeatedly shocked them.

Question 6

What did the confederate learner do?

Answer 6

Cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and complained of heart trouble

Question 7

How many participants continued the shock to maximum voltage?

Answer 7

65%, and to the point that the learner became unresponsive

Question 8

What are the strengths of Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 8

Strict control variables - variables should be controlled because the experiment was done in a laboratory. We should be able to establish cause and effect.

Question 9

What are the weaknesses of Milgram’s experiment ?
Hint= Think of ethics

Answer 9

Low ecological validity - participants were in an articifical situation.

Deception - participants weren’t able to give informed consent because they didn’t know the real nature of the experiment, They weren’t told they could withdraw.

Lack of protection - participants were visibly stressed during the study

Low internal validity - participants might have known they weren’t actually inflicting real shocks and just going along with what the experimenter wanted

Question 10

Why were several variations of the original Milgram experiment conducted ?

Answer 10

To test the boundaries of obedience and when certain features of the situation were changed.

Question 11

What variations meant that participants were less likely to continue delivering shocks?

Answer 11

• When the setting was moved to an office building - highest shock rate dropped to 48%.
• When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, highest shock rate - 40%
• When the teachers’ and learners’ hands were touching, highest shock rate dropped to 30%
• When the researcher gave the orders by phone, the rate dropped to 23%

Question 12

What do the variations of Milgram’s experiment show?

Answer 12

When the humanity of the person being shocked was increased –> obedience decreased.
- When the authority of the experimenter decreased so did obedience

Question 13

What are the three situational factors that affect obedience?

Answer 13

Proximity

Location

Uniform

Question 14

What is proximity as a factor affecting obedience?

Answer 14

How physically close individuals are to the consequences of their actions affects how much they feel compelled to follow others.

Being further away from the consequences of our actions = greater levels

Question 15

What did Milgram find with proximity in his experiment?

Answer 15

When the teacher and the learner were in the same room, and the teacher could see the learner’s distress, obedience levels dropped to 40%

When the teacher was instructed to take the hand of the learner and place it on a metal plate to receive the shock, obedience dropped to 30%.

Question 16

What is location as a factor affecting obedience?

Answer 16

places and locations can be seen as more or less authoritative

Question 17

What kinds of location adds to the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 17

Prestigious universities or government buildings

Question 18

How were obedience rates affected when the experiment was done at Yale University?

Answer 18

Obedience levels were higher than when he moved the test to an office block in a run down area (62.5% to 47.5%)

Question 19

How does uniform affect obedience levels? Milgram/ Bickman

Answer 19

Adds further legitimacy to an authority figure. Milgram in his study, made sure that the researcher was dressed in a lab coat.

Bickman carried out a study where ordinary people were told to pick up litter on a New York street, loan a coin to a stranger or move away from a bus.

14% of people obeyed an individual dressed as a milkman, 38% obeyed a person wearing a security guard’s uniform

Question 20

What do situational factors refer to?

Answer 20

An external explanation of obedient behaviour

Question 21

What did Milgram suggest about the agentic state?

Answer 21

Milgram suggested that people can enter an ‘agentic state’ in which they pass responsibility for their actions onto those giving the orders.

Question 22

agentic state definition

Answer 22

A state in which an individual behaves as the agent of another person

Question 23

What are the two states that Milgram suggests a person can be in?

Answer 23

Autonomous state –> when people have control and act according to their own wishes , they are said to be in an ‘autonomous state’

Agentic state –> when a person obeys an authority figure, they give up some free will

Question 24

What is research evidence for an agentic state?

Answer 24

Milgram’s famous study on obedience , he noted during debrief, participants admitted to feeling under ‘moral strain’ but still continued to obey. This is consistent with an agentic state.

Question 25

What research evidence supports the autonomous state?

Answer 25

Milgram found that when the researchers were not in the same room as the teachers and gave instructions via a telephone, obedience fell from 62.5% - 20.4% –> consistent with an autonomous state.

Question 26

How does legitimacy of authority affect obedience?

Answer 26

People are obedient and accept the power and status of legitimate authority figures to give orders. Individuals are more likely to carry out instructions given by such figures.

People learn to recognise the authority of individuals such as parents, teachers and police officers through early socialisation. There are social roles within a hierarchy. Higher up = more likely to be obeyed.

Question 27

What is an agentic shift?

Answer 27

When individuals shift from the autonomous to agentic shift
e,g participants in Milgram’s study started the experiment in the autonomous state but shifted into the agentic state when they started taking orders.

Question 28

What three factors did Milgram believe caused his participants to stay in the agentic state?

Answer 28

Insistence of authority - the experimenter told participants to continue even when they displayed signs of stress

Pressure of location - the study was conducted in a university. Participants would see the experimenter as a legitimate authority

Unwillingness to disrupt - participants might have felt like they couldn’t stop the experiment because they’d already been paid.

Question 29

What is the dispositional variable of obedience ?

Answer 29

Suggestions that people of an ‘authoritarian personality’ type are more likely to be obedient than others

Question 30

What did Adorno propose?

Answer 30

The idea of an authoritarian personality. Our personality stems from early childhood experiences and influences, especially parents

• Children raised in strict households are thought to be more likely to develop an authoritarian personality type than others
• People scoring higher on tests of authoritarian personality display higher levels of obedience to authority and higher levels of discipline

Question 31

What was Adorno’s test called?

Answer 31

The F-scale
F standing for fascist; that could measure level of authoritarian personality

Question 32

What did Elms and Milgram find a correlation between? Weakness?

Answer 32

A correlation between personality type and authoritarian personality using Milgram’s study.

Weakness -> because it was a correlational study, we cannot be sure that personality type was the cause of the high levels of obedience.

Question 33

What is the weakness of the F-scale?

Answer 33

F-scale questionnaire is easily manipulated –> participants may have been able to second guess he questions.

Question 34

What does F-scale correlate also correlate with?

Answer 34

Education levels