The effect of authoritive figure on obedience

Question 1

Why are people more likely to accept and do requests given by authoritive figures?

Answer 1

Because they have to power to punish people so their presence brings high levels of obedience .

Question 2

Define Autonomous state

Answer 2

We feel responsible for our own actions

Question 3

Define agentic state

Answer 3

• We feel no responsibility for our own actions as authoritative figure put the orders into place and they act under orders from authoritive figure.

Question 4

What did Milgram find?

Answer 4

He found that proximity, legitimacy and power of authoritative figure showed high levels of obedience.
- The intentions of the authoritive figure may be anti-social or pro-social.

Question 5

State the procedure of the ‘uniform’ experiment

Answer 5

• A police officer went around and gave orders such as walking a certain way or littering and the ‘police man’ wore a police uniform
• Over 70% obeyed
• When out of uniform, the experimenter gave the same orders but not many obeyed. Uniform puts into = agentic state.

Question 6

Define the Agency theory

Answer 6

Milgram proposed that people obey orders that they
know to be ethically wrong because they have moved from being in an
autonomous state to an agentic state.

Question 7

Define the Charismatic leaders theory

Answer 7

House et al. proposed that the personality
of the leaders enables them to create a special bond with their
followers. The leader is seen as almost being superhuman and is
idolised by the followers.

Question 8

The electric shook - Milgram backround

Answer 8

• He was interested about whether there was a difference about the Nazis actions against humanity and anyone.
• If they would do the same thing under the same circumstances

Question 9

The electric shook - Milgram procedure

Answer 9

• He conducted a controlled observation into obedience
  A ‘learner’ confederate was given words to learn and the participant would check if the learner’ got it right.
  The learner’ would be shocked every time he got it wrong.
  A researcher wearing a lab coat would encourage him to keep on going

Question 10

The electric shook - Milgram procedure part 2

Answer 10

• Location held in Yale
• a separation between learner and participant
• Researcher said he would take responsibility (agency theory)
• volts from 15 to ‘450’
• participant paid £4:30 an hour
• Orders were given from “please continue” to “you have no other choice to continue”

Question 11

The electric shook - Milgram results

Answer 11

All participants continued to at least 300 volts he repeated variations of experiment with similar results