Social Influence

• Obedience: Situational Variables

  Proximity: same room 40%, touch/force hand 30%, remote instruction 20.5% & faked, psychologically distanced

  Location: run down office 47.5%, uni gave legitimacy and authority not office.

  Uniform: Exp called away and taken over by "member of public" 20%, uniform gave authority
• Obedience: Situational Variables Evaluation

  + Support, Bickman 1974 3 confeds, suit, milkman, guard, all asked passers-by's to pick up litter, twice as likely to obey guard

  + Cross-culture, Meeus & Raaijmakers 1986 used more realistic study for Dutch ppts, saying stressful things in interview to candidate (confed), 90% obeyed, apply to other cultures and women

  _ Low int val, Orne & Holland 1968 crit baseline, even more likely in these variations - especially when experimenter replaced by member of public, unclear if findings genuine or demand characteristics
• Obedience: Situational Explanations

  Agentic state 1974: autonomous state undergoes agentic shift when authority figure (hierarchy) present. Binding factors keep people in agentic state - aspects of situation that allow person to ignore or minimise damaging effect of behaviour so reduce moral strain - e.g. victim blame

  Legitimacy of authority: more likely to obey those we perceive to have authority over us, authority is justified in social hierarchy, problems when this is destructive.
• Obedience: Situtional Explanations Evaluation

  + Support from Milgram's studies, ppts asked who was resp if learner harmed and exp said exp was, no further objections (agentic)

  + Cross culture diff, Kilham & Mann 1974 16% Australian women went to 450v in Milgram style study, Mantell found 85% for German ppts (legit)

  + RWA - My Lai massacre was due to destructive legitimate authority (legit)
• Obedience: Dispositional Explanation

  (Adorno)

  Authoritarian personality shows extreme respect and submissiveness to authority. Contempt for those perceived weaker. Black and white thinking. "others" are scapegoats for society's problems.

  Formed in childhood, harsh parenting, conditional love, strict discipline, fear of parents gets displaced onto scapegoats
• Adorno's Research 1950


  2000 middle-class white Americans got sent F-scale (fascism), to measure authoritarian personality.

  People that scored high identified with "strong people", were conscious of status and showed high respect for those of higher status.

  Strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
• Obedience: Dispositional Explanation Evaluation

  + Support, Elms & Milgram 1966 interviewed small sample of og ppts who had been fully obedient, all completed f-scale and scored significantly higher than control of 20 disobedient

  _ Limited explanation, e.g. Nazi Germany had high levels of obedience and anti-Semitic behaviour but very unlikely they all had authoritarian personality.

  _ Political bias, Christie & Jahoda (1954) argued that F-scale politically biased interpretation of AP towards extreme left as well as right. Doesn't account for across spectrum.
• Resistance to Social Influence

  Social support: presence of dissenter reduced conformity and obedience (10%) rates

  Locus of control: high internal LOC are more able to resist pressures because of their own personal responsibility.