OBEDIENCE

Question 1

OBEDIENCE

Answer 1

obedience means acting in response to a direct order, usually from an authority figure.

Question 2

situational factors affecting obedience

Answer 2

1. proximity of authority figure
2. proximity of victim
3. uniform
4. location

Question 3

explanations of obedience

Answer 3

legitimacy of authority
agency theory
authoritarian personality

Question 4

legitimacy of authority

Answer 4

• social hierarchies
• people tend to obey others if they recognise them as being morally right or legitimate.

Question 5

study related to legitimacy of authority

Answer 5

bickman, 1974 did a field study where the passersby were asked to do a certain task like picking up the litter. researchers were dressed in guard uniform or just in normal clothes. it was found that people were more likely to obey the guards in uniform which is because they seemed to be the legitimate authority figure.

Question 6

agency theory new terminology - moral strain

Answer 6

when people know they need to follow the authority figure but dont want to be responsible for the horrible consequences.

Question 7

agency theory (1973)

Answer 7

agency theory states that people are more likely to obey orders if they know that the authority figure is gonna be responsible for the consequences of their own actions.
- autonomous state is when someone acts in a way they want to. the shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state is called agentic shift.

Question 8

authoritarian personality

Answer 8

adorno et al (1950) came up with the theory of authoritarain personality where some people are very likely to blindly follow obedience.
- adorno stated that authoritarian personality is a consequence of over strict parenting where they are taught to blindly follow orders but also they feel constrained which then results in them being hostile to minority groups .
- people with authoritarian personality are likely to be rigid to moral standards and aggressive.

Question 9

the f scale

Answer 9

f standing for fascism is a scale to measure authoritarian traits of a person .
adorno developed f scale and carried out a research after the second world war and found that most nazis secured highrr scores on the fascism scale.
- miligram found that person having over strict parents or authoritarian personality had been willing to administer bigger shocks in his prison experiment.
- however not everybody has this personality type.

Question 10

dispositional explanation of obedience

Answer 10

authoritarian personality

Question 11

miligrams additional experiments
1. proximity of victim

Answer 11

when the learner was in the different room from the participant, obedience was found to be 65% which then later dropped to 40% when the participant was in the same room making it harder for the learner to resist their suffering.

Question 12

location

Answer 12

when the experiment was done again in a rundown office rather than the prestigious yale university, obedience rate dropped to 48%.

Question 13

presence of authority figure

Answer 13

when the authority figure was giving orders from a different toom, the obedience rate dropped to 23%

Question 14

uniform

Answer 14

obedience rate dropped to 20%

Question 15

evaluation ( strength of miligram experiment)

Answer 15

• lab experiment so good control over extraneous variables
• could establish a cause and an effect relationship.

Question 16

limitations of miligrams experiment

Answer 16

-demand characteristics- maybe the participants didnt believe the shocks were real and just gooin with miligrams orders.
- lacks ecological validity
- gender bias as all the participants wdre male
- ethical issues as participants were deceived and they also showed signs of distress, sweating and groaning
-

Question 17

evaluation of legitimacy of authority

Answer 17

• miligrams study provides evidence as when the researcher was in a lab coat, participants found him more legitimate.
• as explained by the definition of legitimacy of authority, people tend to follow orders from people who they consider legitimate. but however in miligrams experiment only 65% of the people agreed to his orders.
• could be other dispositional factors affecting obedience.

Question 18

evaluation of agency theory

Answer 18

as miligrams study result shows
- partici[ants were more likely to obey when he took the responsibility.
- more likely to obey when farther away from the victims
- however ignores individual variables affecting obedience.

Question 19

evidence of authoritarian personality

Answer 19

correctly predicts that some people obey more than the others as we can see from miligrams study.
- miligram did an additional research where he found that the people willing to do high voltage on his prison study actually scored higer on the f scale test.
- not everyone who obeys has an authoritarian personality.
- eventhough obedience has acorrelation with authoritarian personality, but it doesnt mean that there is a cause and an effect relationship.
-

Question 20

resistance to social influence

Answer 20

resistance to social influence is when someone resists a direct order from the authoritarian personality.

Question 21

social support

Answer 21

having socual support makes the people resist more to social influence.
eg in asch study when one of the confederate agreed with them, participants were more likely to resist the pressure to conform.
- situational explanation

Question 22

locus of control

Answer 22

locus of control means the amount of control that people think they have thier own lives. it is a dispositional explanation for resistance.

Question 23

internal locus of control

Answer 23

people with internal locus of control are more likely to resist social influence. they feel a stronger sense of control over their lives. more likely to exhibit independent behaviour.

Question 24

external locus of control

Answer 24

rotter suggests that people with external locus of control are more likely to obey.

Question 25

minority influence

Answer 25

when a minority group changes the attitudes and behaviours of a majority group, it is what we call minority influence.

Question 26

what can you associate minority influence with?

Answer 26

internalisation

Question 27

conversion

Answer 27

the process by which a minority influence a majority group

Question 28

stages of conformity

Answer 28

conflict, understanding and validity

Question 29

factors influecing the strength of minority influence

Answer 29

consistency,commitment and flexibility

Question 30

minority influence and social change ( the snowball effect)

Answer 30

few people agree with minority making them more influential, then results in more and more people agreeing until minority bexomes a majority which is what we call the snowball effect.

Question 31

minority influence research by moscovici et al (1969)

Answer 31

• 192 female participants took part and they were divided in groups of 6 where 2 of them were confederates.
• participants were shown 36 slides of blue color with different variations.
• two situation = when the confederates were consistent ,i.e, when they said that the color is green, 8.2% of the majority agreed with them eventho it was very clear that the color was blue. atleast 32% of the participants agreed once.
• however when the confederates were being inconsistent, the rate dropped to 1.2% which means that minority group do have an influence.

Question 32

evaluation of moscovicis study

Answer 32

• low population validity as the results can not be generalised to male participants
• low ecological validity - cannit be generalised to real life situations
• ## could be unethical as the particpants were deceived

Question 33

research into flexibility by nemeth

Answer 33

• repeated moscovicis experiment by running three variations
  1. said all slides were green
• said all slides were either green or green blue randomly.
• said the darker shades were green and the brighter shades were blue green.
• when the confederates said situation 1 and 2, i.e, they were being inconsistent so they had no effect on participants response.
• however in the third situation where the participants were being flexible, they did make an impact on the response. consistent but flexible.