SOCIAL THEORIES Flashcards
What is obedience?
Compliance with an order, request, or low
Submission to another’s authority
What is moral strain?
The distress experienced by an order going against our conscience and morals
What are defence mechanisms?
Denial
Avoidance
Degree of involvement
Helping the learner
How can moral strain be lessened? Why?
Going into the agentic state
The authority figure is then responsible for our actions
What is the autonomous state?
Perceiving oneself to be responsible for our own behaviour and acting of our own free will
What is the agentic state?
Perceiving oneself to be the agent of an authority figure and following their commands to diffuse responsibility
What are the explanations for agentic shift?
Obedience is a survival trait that has been carried down through genes
Operant conditioning (reward obedience, punish disobedience in childhood)
What supporting evidence is there for agency theory?
Milgram (1963)/ Burger (2009) - participants showed moral strain but still obeyed
The holocaust, Rwandan Genocide, Abu Ghraib
Meeus and Raaijmakers (1986) / Shanab and Yahya (1978) -similar results in Holland/Jordan
What conflicting evidence is there for Agency theory?
Social Impact Theory (Latane)
French and Raven/Adorno - personality factors
Moral strain was not seen by disobedient participants (milgram)
Reductionist
Deterministic
How can agency theory be applied to society?
Reduce prejudice and discrimination - authority figures order tolerance and understanding
Reduce risks of blind obedience - reduce authority figures having too much power through checks and balances / holocaust Memorial Day
Is agency theory testable?
Yes: Moral strain can be witnessed and recorded as seen in Milgram and Burgers studies
No: is difficult to measure whether someone is in an autonomous state or agentic state
What is the equation for social impact theory?
i=f(SIN)
i - impact f - function S - strength I - immediacy N - number
What are the three social forces?
Number
Strength
Immediacy
What does number mean in social impact theory?
How many sources and targets there are in a situation trying to influence/being influenced
What does strength mean in social impact theory?
How respected/important you perceive a group or person
What does immediacy mean in social impact theory?
How close a person is to another in a social situation
How recent the influence was
Give evidence supporting number in social impact theory
Milgram, Bickman and Berkowitz
42% looked up with one confederate
86% looked up with fifteen confederates
Give evidence supporting strength in social impact theory
Variation 13 (ordinary man) 65% in original experiment 20% in variation 13
Give evidence supporting immediacy in social impact theory
Variation 7 (telephone)
65% obeyed in original
22.5% in variation 7
What is the psychosocial law?
When the number of sources increases, obedience increases, but at lower intervals with each source added
The most impact comes from the first source
What is the divisional effect?
The impact force is distributed amongst all targets
The larger the target audience size, the smaller the influence (diffusion of responsibility)
What is the multiplicative effect?
The combination of strength, number, and immediacy increases the impact of obedience
What supporting evidence is there for Social Impact Theory?
Sedikides and Jackson (1990) - “don’t lean on the rails” zoo uniform vs ordinary man
What conflicting evidence is there for social impact theory?
Mullen (1985) - meta analysis shows strength/immediacy had weak correlation and lacked consistency
Reductionist - breaks down the brain into a formula
Does not address personality
Agency theory
