social influence-obedience Flashcards
what is obedience
a type of social influence whereby a person acts in response to a direct or explicit order from a person with percieved legitimate authority
what is the opposite of obedience
dissent or definace
why is it important to study obedience
maintains law and order
allows society to keep functioning
it prevents atrocities from happening in the future
what is blind obedience
when people obey without questioning leads to negative consequences
how where volunteers recruited in milgrams study
in a newspaper AD via volunteer sampling technique
what is a volunteer sample technique
where participants offer to take part in your research
what are some strengths of the volunteer sampling technique
quick
easy
convenient
what are some weaknesses of the volunteer sampling technique
-tend to get similar personality types-not representative which skews results
gender/age/pay/class of volunteers
male
20-50
$4.50
from a range of educational levels eg-high school teachers, salesmen and engineers
where/what was the study about
prestigious yale university
about obedience but they were deceived and thought it was a memory study
strength of milgrams sample
20-50-range of ages-representative of society
-from different educational levels
weakness of milgrams sample
-all where volunteers-tend to be same personality type
-all male
procedure of milgrams experiment
a confederate “mr wallace” was always the learner and the true participant was always the teacher and the experimenter was wearing a grey lab coat. The learner was wired with fake electrodes each time they got an answer wrong the teacher would shock them which rose in increments of 15V(as it was less commitment). when the teacher got to 300V the learner pounded on the wall then gave no response after the 315V the learner pounded on the wall but there was no further response. Each time they looked for guidance they would be given a verbal prod
why where the participants exposed to the same feedback from the experimenter
standardised
consistent results
what behaviours where participants displaying
showing signs of extreme stress eg-sweat, tremble ,groan and dig fingernails into skin (its unethical)
what where the findings of milgrams experiment
100% 300V
65% 450V
people blindly obey despite negative consequences
what did milgrams students and colleges predict
2-3% would continue to the end
-they said they wouldn’t shock people (shows self-report measures are invalid and do not measure what they intend to)
what did millgram conclude
that people go against their moral conscious due to situational factors
how did millgrams ease his patients
he carried out a debreifing session and made annual contact with the patients
what is meant by situational variables
factors from the environment that may impact on behaviour
what is the opposite of situational variables
dispositional variables eg-personality
what situational variables led to the obedinace seen in milgrams study
-location-prestigious YALE university
-uniform-grey lab coat
-proximity-experimenter not in the same room
how did proximity affect obedience
when the experimenter was in a different room and gave instructions via the phone obedience dropped to 21%
-this suggests that when we are faced with the consequences of our action blind obedience drops
how does location affect obedience
when the experiment was conducted in Yale 65% went to 450 vs the 47.5% in the run-down office building
-there is more perceived legitimate authority in the prestigious Yale university
How does uniform affect obedience
-when the experimenter was wearing normal clothes as appose to they grey lab coat obedience dropped to 20% as there’s less perceived legitimate authority
how do we evaluate studies
Reliability-measure of consistency
Application to real life-do the findings of the research have practical applications
Validity
internal validity-concerned with what goes on inside the study
external validity-can the findings be generalised beyond the study-is it representative of different groups in society
Ethical flaws-how did they deal with the issue
how was Milgram’s study reliable
he used a standardised procedure eg-15V increments and verbal prods
-this meant the study could be replicated and therefore reliability could be assessed
-Milgram’s study has been replicated numerous amounts of times and consistent results have been found eg-Hofling, Bickman
how can milgrams study be applied to real life
-its shows our surprising tendency towards destructive obedience therefore helps us understand historical events eg-holocaust so we can prevent them from happening in the future
-helps us to increase obedience in eg-schools, workplaces, prisons
how did milgrams study show internal validity
-it was a well controlled-it was in a laboratory setting which meant he measure cause and effect relationship between the IV-presence of authority figure and DV-levels of shocks administered
how did Milgram’s study not show internal validity
-Perry (2013) listened back to the tapes an noticed participants expressed doubts about the shocks
this suggests participants may have been displaying DEMAND CHARACTERISTICS