obedience

• obedience is following the order or instruction of and authority figure
• Milgram conducted a study to investigate the strength of obedience tendencies. It involved a sample of 40 males aged 20-50. 1 subject and 1 victim (accomplice) participated in each experiment.
• milgram procedure: researchers decided participants into thinking they were shocking learners. They were instructed to administer a shock every time the victim gave an incorrect answer. Each time a shock was given the voltage would increase. The victim began making noises and by 300 was screaming and banging on the wall to stop. the experiment was to see how far the participant would keep administering the shock when instructed to keep doing so
• Milgrams study is not generalisable as the sample was very small and also androcentric and ethnocentric
• milgrams study is replicable as it was a lab experiment with a standardised procedure. It was replicated on a French tv documentary and gave similar results.
• milgrams study is applicable as it helps us understand why people obey and act against their morals when authority commands them
• milgrams study is not externally valid as it cannot apply to real life (low ecological validity)
• Milgrams study is Not internally valid as there were demand characteristic as some participants realised the shock were not real and went to high to be true
• Milgrams study has multiple ethical issues including: deception, right to withdraw and do no harm
• Results of milgrams experiments were that 65% of participants continued to the highest level of volts and 14 stopped after 300
• milgram made variations to see what would make a participant obey more or less
• the variables changed by milgram were location, proximity and uniform
• the changes and results of proximity were: teacher places hand in learner (30%), orders through phone (20.5%) and learner and teacher in same room (40%)
• the changes and results made to uniform in milgrams study was having a public person giving the orders (20%)
• the changes and results made to location in milgram study was conducting it in a rundown office (47.5%)
• supporting evidence form milgrams variations was bickmans uniform variable supporta the evidence
• limiting evidence to milgrams variations is the lack of generalisability due to a dutch replica which the interviewers were harassed which shows opposing results and a lack of internal validity as the milkman may have produced demand characteristics
• People obey because their are external factors (situational variables) making them or because there are internal factors (dispositional variables) making them.
• One situational explanation as to why people obey is agentic state
• Agentic state is when people displace any guilt or responsibility for any negative action due to them acting on behalf of somebody else. This is due to a shift from autonomous state where there is awareness of morals and your actions
• Another situational explanation as to why people obey is legitimate authority. This is the conscious awareness of social hierarchy with different levels of status to which bind us to obey. This leads people to not take responsibility because they are at the bottom of the hierarchy
• Dispositional explanations are based on personality and individuals characteristics
• One dispostional explanation for obey is the authoritarian personality (Adorno). This is a personality that develops because of childhood experiences and leads people to have extreme respect for authority, very conscious of others status, highly traditional values etc.
• obidient people live guilt free by: denial, repression and displacement
• adorno research: authoritarian personality-

  procedure-studied more then 2000 middle class white americans on their unconscious attitudes towards ethnic groups using several measurment scales. this included the f-scale
• adornos findings: he found that people with an authoritarian personality identified with strong people, were very conscious of status, showed extreme respect for those of a higher status. he also found authoritarian people to have a certain cognitive style in which there was fixed thinking and distinctive stereotypes between groups
• limitations of adornos research is that it’s not generalisable due to a strictly middle class Americans sample. there may also be response biases based on social desirability
• the situational variables affecting obedience are location, uniform and proximity
• agentic state and legitimacy of authority are both explanations for obedience presented by milgram following the results of his experiment and variations.
• milgram also conducted a varitation were someone else administered the result which led to 92% administering the full volts which proves agentic state and shift of responsibility
• rank & Jacobson 1977 -found only 2 of 18 nurses obeyed when a known drug (Valium) was ordered at 3 times the recommended drug by a known doctor which shows a limitation of legitimacy of authority