Types of Influence Flashcards
According to Milgram (1974), subjects in his study were willing to obey authority:
A. only until they realized that doing so caused harm to another person.
B. only because they believed their peers had already done so.
C. because they were concerned about the negative consequences of not doing so.
D. because they didn’t believe they were responsible for their actions.
Answer D is correct. Milgram proposed that subjects obeyed the experimenter in his studies because the situation put them in an “agentic state,” which he defined as “the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes” (1974, p. 111).
Psychological reactance is associated with which of the following?
A. feeling that one’s personal freedom is being threatened by a request or demand
B. obeying an authority’s orders when doing so has harmful consequences
C. imagining alternative outcomes that could have happened but didn’t
D. conforming to the group norm to avoid the group’s rejection or ridicule
Answer A is correct. Psychological reactance occurs when people feel that pressure to behave in a particular way threatens their personal freedom and they respond in ways that help them regain their sense of freedom.
When making calls for a local charity, Maggie starts out by asking a potential donor for a donation of $50.00. When the donor refuses, she then asks if the donor can donate $10.00. Maggie’s strategy illustrates which of the following?
A. insufficient justification
B. psychological reactance
C. door-in-the-face technique
D. foot-in-the-door technique
Answer C is correct. When using the door-in-the-face technique, the influencer begins with a large request that most people would reject and, when that request is rejected, the influencer makes a smaller request.
Compared to the results of Milgram’s study on obedience to authority, Burger’s (2009) replication study found:
A. slightly lower levels of obedience for both males and females.
B. slightly lower levels of obedience for males but higher levels for females.
C. slightly lower levels of obedience for females but higher levels for males.
D. higher levels of obedience for both males and females.
Answer A is correct. Burger’s study found slightly lower levels of obedience than Milgram did for both males and females, with the difference between the outcomes of the two studies not being statistically significant.
