obedience

• 2 mark definition of obedience 


  A type of social influence whereby someone acts in response to direct order from a perceived authority figure.
• What is a situational explanation? 


  Arguing that the behaviour resulted from the situation a person was in.
• What is a dispositional explanation?


  Arguing that the cause of behaviour is believed to result from the persons own personality or characteristics.
• What did Milgram believe the Germans had? 


  A basic character deficit.
• What is a basic character deficit?

  A readiness to obey people in authority regardless of the act they are being asked to carry out.
• What did Milgram believe the situation had led to?

  The inhumane behaviour of the Nazi‘s. He believed that anyone in the same situation as those committing such atrocities would have done the same in the same circumstances, if required to do so by an authority figure.
• What was Milgram‘s aim?

  To investigate how far people will go in obeying an authority figure.
• Who were the participants?

  -40 males aged between 20 and 50 who‘s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional.

  -They were all volunteers recruited through a newspaper advertisement inviting people to participate in a study of learning memory which would take one hour at Yale university.

  -It was mentioned they would be paid 4.5 dollars just for turning up.
• Milgram’s procedure: (Preperation)

  • Met by a young man (31) in a grey lab coat- introduced himself as experimenter
  • Introduced to another participant (Mr Wallace) a confederate of the experimenter- late fifties, an accountant, mild mannered and likeable.
  • He told the P he was investigating the effects of punishment on learning.
  • Rigged so the confederate was always the learner.
  • P sees learner being strapped in a chair in a room wired with electrodes that would supposedly deliver an electric shock from a shock generator. He then goes to those adjacent room with the experimenter.