factors obedience

• Authoritarian personality


  Adorno et al 1950.

  Harsh parenting -> traits like toughness, destructive, "authotarianism"

  Measures using F-scale (facism)

  Believed this parenting style common in Germany so adults more submissive to power but harsh to lower groups. Permissive parenting -

  loving parenting -> lower on F scale and defy destructive orders
• Internal & external locus of control (LOC)

  Internal LOC - greater responsibility for actions as they believe they're in control of their actions

  External LOC - what happens to them is governed by chance factors

  Internals more likely to defy orders and externals to obey.

  Miller 1975 made high/low status experimenter tell P's to grasp live electric wire: externals obeyed high status more and internals unaffected by status.
• Gender

  women more: Sheridan & Kings 1972 - P's shock puppies. 100% women and 54% men. But women showed more distress (sobbing).

  men more: Kilham & Mann 1974 - Milgram replication in Australia. 40% males and 16% females obeyed
• Gender: moral reasoning in decision making

  Gilligan 1982,

  Men: 'ethics of justice' more commonly seen

  Women: 'ethics of care' (fairness requires detached outlook v nurturing)

  SO men expected to be more obedient due to feeling of obligation and women less obedient - want to help harmed person
• Authoritarianism strength


  research support - Elms and Milgram 1966, tested P's from Milgrams previous studies with F-scale (20 obedient and 20 non). Obedient P's scored higher and reported other authoritarian characteristics like closeness to fathers.

  SO obedience could be related to authoritarianism (personality characteristic)
• Authoritarianism weakness


  cannot claim there's a casual relationship between childhood experiences and authoritarianism/obedience - only a correlation

  Eg both obedience and authoritarianism may be caused by low levels of education
• LOC strength


  application to field of human resources (HR)

  some jobs require low/high obedience so could use a scale assessing LOC to select suitable applicant

  personality tests in job recruitment could lead to greater productivity and job satisfaction
• LOC weakness


  Schurz 1985

  Australia, P's instructed to give painful doses of ultrasound to female student. Fully obedient and resisted P's scores on questionnaire measuring locus of control didn't sig differ.

  SO personality has little effect
• Moral reasoning strength


  support from qualitative research (Gilligan & Attanucci 1988)

  Male & Female P's interviewed about moral dilemmas. Most used both but men favoured ethic of justice orientation and women favoured care

  Gender digs highly significant

  SO important gender difs in moral orientations which may well affect decision making in destructive obedience situations
• Moral reasoning weakness


  Many studies find no gender difs

  Blass 1999 summarised findings of 9 Milgram styled studies that included both genders. In all but 1 case there was no sig dif between men and women
• Situation

  Legitimacy - reducing perceived legitimacy of authority figure or status of venue can reduce obedience (Stan 10)

  Behaviour of others - Stan 17: 2 further teachers who rebelled & obedience dropped to 10% (exposure to rebels)

  Proximity - or immediacy (Latane). Physical/psychological barriers to communication (buffers) affect immediacy. Stan 3 - physical buffer (wall) between teacher and learner removed & obedience fell to 40%
• Culture 


  Hofstede in 2011 made 6 dimensions - comparisons of countries w regards to their cultural values. We learn 2 dimensions.
• Individualism-colectivism

  Individualistic cultures (IC) value personal autonomy and self-reliance whereas CC value loyalty to group (I vs We)

  Expect people from IC countries like US to be less obedient due to value on independence & CC's more (like China) because more obligation and sense of duty overrides desire to rebel
• Power distance index (PDI)


  accepting hierarchical order. 'subordinates expect to be told what to do and ideal boss is benevolent autocrat' (Hofstede 2017).

  Higher in this dimension more obedient and lower would be less
• Situation strength


  Lots of supporting evidence. Meeus & Raaijmakers 1995 asked P's to say increasingly mean insults to confederate applying for job.

  Baseline conditions - over 90% said all 15

  Experimenter left - 36%

  2 rebellious stooges - 16% (like Stan's 17)

  SO possible to reduce obedience through adjusting situation
• Situation weakness


  Individual differences in all of Stan's variations - some refused to shock despite situational pressures to obey

  SO personality must be key part in any explanation
• Culture strength


  close relation between PDI and obedience

  Kilham & Mann (1974) found only 28% obedience in Australia (PDI 36%)

  Recent replication in Poland (Dolinski et al 2017) found 90% obedience w higher Psi score of 68%

  SO PDI useful in predicting obedience
• Culture weakness


  Most nations have similarly high levels of obedience

  Blass 2012 calculated average obedience rate for 8 non-USA Milgram replications finding an overall of 68% (USA average was 61%)

  Blass concludes obedience is a universal social behaviour and culture doesn't affect it