Obedience

• milgram aim: to assess obedience levels, why Germans obeyed the nazis
• Milgram sample: 40 USA volunteers male paid £4.50 an hour
• Milgram results: all delivered up to 300v, 12.5% stopped at 300v, 65% continued to 450v, participants showed physical distress
• Milgram conclusion: german people are not different, certain factors encourage obedience
• Milgram method : at yale uni, believed they were taking a study on memory and punishment, volunteer introduced to unknown confederate, rigged to pick teacher, separated from learner, given shock, told to read memory question if wrong shock, 15v - 450v, recorded response from learner, prods from experimenter in grey lab coat
• Milgram end: debrief, 84% glad to have taken part, predicted only 3% would go up to 450v
• situational variables: the features in the physical environment that influence behaviour
• dispositional variables: a persons individual personality as an explanation for their behaviour
• proximity: the physical closeness or distance an authority figure or agent is when giving orders
• location: the place where an order is given. Locations have levels of prestige, status legitimacy
• uniform: people in positions of authority often wear a specific outfit to reflect their authority
• milgram situation variable, run down office: 47.5% obedience
• milgram situational variable, T in same room as L: 40% obedience
• milgram situational variable: T places L hand on electric plate: 30% obedience
• milgram situational variable, E gave orders by telephone: 20.5% obedience
• milgram situational variable, E was played by member of public: 20% obedience
• Milgram situational variables strengths: supporting studies - bickman 1974 3 confederates milkman, businessman and guard asked public to clean up litter, public more likely to listen to guard than any other.

  reproduced in other cultures - meemus 1986 asked dutch participants to interview desperate confederate with hard questions, 90% obeyed when someone present if not obedience drastically fell
• Milgram situational variable limitations: socially insensitive - gives excuse, unrealistic procedure - responding to demand characteristics
• Binding factors: aspects of a situation that allow someone to ignore/ minimise the affects of their behaviour reducing moral strain and keeping them in the agentic state
• Agentic state: acting as an agent for an authority figure feeling no responsibility for your actions. Experience moral strain and feel powerless to leave
• Agentic shift: occurs when we perceive someone as an authority figure so follow their commands
• Autonomous state: when someone feels free to behave according to their own principles and have a sense of responsibility for their actions
• agentic state strengths: research support from milgram
• agentic state limitations: doesn't explain all causes of obedience - Rank + Jacobson nurses, creates an obedience alibi
• legitimacy of authority: an explanation for obedience which suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive have justified authority over us. it is justified by their position of power in the social hierarchy
• destructive authority: a person with legitimate authority that uses it for destructive purposes.
• legitimacy of authority strengths: accounts for cultural differences in obedience - 16% Australians obeyed, 85% Germans obeyed Milgram like test
• legitimacy of authority limitations: cannot explain all disobedience - Rank and Jacobson nurses, creates an excuse - My Lai Massacre
• authoritarian personality: a personality type that is more likely to submit to authority and dismiss inferiors
• F-Scale : the fascism scale developed as a measure of authoritarian traits
• scapegoating : punishing or resenting people who are inferior because you cannot take out these feelings on the people that are causing them
• authoritarian personality origins: a child only receives conditional love, is often punished for little mistakes but must be loyal to the person of authority. this creates anger which cannot be expressed to the person in authority so is scapegoated
• authoritarian personality behaviours: identify and submit to strengths, dismiss weak, conscious of status, black and white thinking, fixed stereotypes, anything "different" is the cause of bad, upholding traditions
• adorno aim: to understand the origins of prejudice and how it is learned
• adorno sample: 2000 middle class white USA
• adorno method: f scale test for example businessmen are more important than artists in society
• adorno results: high result = authoritarian personality and a positive correlation with prejudice
• adorno conclusion: certain personality types have more radical unconscious attitudes towards racial groups
• Milgram baseline study strength: research support - French documentary 80% went to 460v,
• milgram bp weaknesses:

  unethical - caused distress, darley 1992 suggested stress can change brain function to want to repeat actions

  low population validity - different results in Australia kilham and mann 1974 found only 16% of female students administered maximum voltagw