DISPOSITIAL FACTORS AFFECTING OBEDIENCE Flashcards
(42 cards)
Individual Differences - Authoritarian personality
Adorno argued that the key to understanding extreme obedience and racial prejudice is to look early in childhood experiences where personality is formed
Authoritarian personalities have a tendency to be extremely obedient
Why do people have Authoritarian personalities?
Adorno found that pps who had been brought up by strict parents who used physical punishment often grew up to be very obedient
Authoritarians often come from cold and unloving families with a hostile atmosphere that withdraw affection as a mental punishment
How did Adorno study his theory?
- Adorno interviewed 2000 US students from mainly white middle class backgrounds
- He spoke to them about their childhood experiences
- He used projective tests to gain access to their unconscious thoughts and assess their levels of obedience and prejudice
What is the F scale?
It measures how authoritarian an individual is
How patriotic and traditional an individuals views tend to be
Authoritarianism - conventionalism
(people with high F scores will be more conventionalist)
They believe that obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn
They believe that rules are very important
Authoritarianism - Aggression
They get aggressive when people break social norms and have unconventional views
People with high F scores do not challenge things/authority
Authoritarianism - power and toughness
People with high scores think people can be divided into two distinct classes: strong (hardworking) and weak (lazy)
(Social dominance orientation)
Authoritarian personality (strength) - Elms and Milgram
They interviewed Milgrams participants and found that pps who were really obedient/went to 450 V scored higher on authoritarianism tests
Authoritarian personality (strength) - Damnrun & Vatine
They created a simulation of Milgrams experiment using a virtual environment/computer simulation and found that authoritarianism was linked to obedience, as high authoritarian scores = less likely to withdraw from the study
Authoritarian personality (Weakness) - Chan
Chan found that refugees of the Chinese revolution have high authoritarian personalities, but gradually changed when they moved to the USA
- Their authoritarian personality is not due to family but developed from school (going against Adorno’s claims)
- Their personality change when they moved to the USA, suggesting that authoritarian personalities are not fixed
Authoritarian personality (Weakness) - Elms & Milgram
Elms and Milgram also found that pps who went up to 450 V and scored high on the authoritarianism test, also had a loving relationship with their parents
(going against Adorno’s claims)
What does charisma have to do with obedience?
Charismatic leaders may contribute to obedience and enhance peoples tendency towards destructive obedience
E.g - Hitler and Stalin were regarded as charismatic leaders. Conversely charismatic leadership can also bring positive change.
E.g Gandhi and Martin Luther King
Charisma is best understood in terms of the characteristics of the leader and the relationship they have with their followers
Characteristics of a charismatic leader
Charismatic leaders have a clear vision, clear reason to obey them and emotional language
What does dispositional factors mean?
= individual differences and personality trait that affect an individuals level of obedience
Dispositional factors
- Authoritarian personality
- Locus of control
- Gender
- Empathy
Who came up with the concept “locus of control”?
Rotter (1966)
What does internal locus of control refer to?
An individuals perception of their personal control over events in their own life and their own behaviour
- Someone with a strong internal locus of control, believes that they can control events to an extent and what happens to them is a result of their own ability and effort. They generally display independence in adult behaviour and rely less on other peoples opinions (they are more able to resist social influence)
What does external locus of control refer to?
- When an individual has a strong belief in luck, fate and other peoples opinions, they believe that things that happen are out of their control
- People with strong internal locus of control tend to take less personal responsibility for their actions and are less likely to display independent behaviour and follow the influence of others
Locus of control weakness - Schurz (1985)
- He conducted a study similar to Milgrams procedure
- He instructed Austrian pps to give painful doses of ultrasound to a female student
- There was a little different in locus of control between those who obeyed and those who descended
- Suggesting locus of control has a little effect on obedience levels
(gender is worth noting)
Locus of control strength - Oliner & Oliner
- Interviewed 2 groups of non-Jewish people who lived through the Holocaust
- Comparing the 406 who had protected and rescued Jews from the Nazis with 126 who had not acted
- They found that ‘rescuers’ had scores demonstrating high internal locus of control and scored high on measures of social responsibility
Locus of control - Evaluation
- From most of the studies, it appears that locus of control and social responsibility are both factors of an individuals ability to disobey orders and a social norms
Individual difference - Empathy
We assume people who have high levels of empathy will be less likely to harm others when instructed to do so by perceived authority figure
However
Burger (2009) - who tested empathy before conducting his study - found that although people who scored high on empathy tests were more likely to protest against giving electric shocks, this did not translate to lower levels of obedience
Individual differences weakness - Gender - Blass (1998)
- He studied 9 other replications of Milgram’s study which also had male and female pps
- Consistent with Milgrams own findings 8/9 times, there was no evidence of any gender differences regarding obedience
Individual differences strength - Gender - Sheridan & King
- Adapted Milgrams experiment, using live puppies as the learner
- All 13 female pps were much more compliant with the demands made by the authority figure
Females = 100% obedience rate
Males = 54% obedience rate
