cultural

• Cultural factors affecting obedience - individualism/collectivism

  • individualist cultures values personal autonomy and self-reliance whereas collectivist cultures value loyalty to the group, interdependence and cooperation in pursuit of group goals.
  • consequently we might expect that people from more individualist cultures (eg, north europe and US) may be less obedient due to the value placed on self-determination and independence compared with those from more collectivist cultures (eg, china and brazil) where obligation and sense of duty may override the desire to rebel.
• Cultural factors affecting obedience - PDI

  • power distance index refers to how accepting people are of hierarchical order and inequality in society
  • in high PDI cultures 'subordinates expect to be told what to do and the ideal boss is a benevolent autocrat' (hofstede 2017)
  • we might expect that identification with the values of such a culture would lead to a person to be highly obedient while people from nation low on this dimension might be more likely to show resistance or dissent
• Cultural factors affecting obedience - strengths

  • strength = close relationship between obedieince and Hofstede's cultural dimension, PDI
  • Eg, Kilham and Mann (1974) found a low level of obedience of 28% in australia, which scores very low for power distance (36%) while a recent replication in polande (Dolinski 2017) found a high level of obedience of 90% with a higher power of distance score of 68%
  • suggests that Hofstede's power distance dimension is useful in predicting obedience
• Cultural factors affecting obedience - weakness

  • weakness = in general, most nations around the world return similarly high levels of obedience
  • Blass (2012) calculated the average obedience rate for 8 non-US Milgram replications finding an overall percentage of 66% compared with an average of 61% for the US replications.
  • although there is some variations both within the US studies and across the world, Blass draws attention to these very similar averages
  • this finding is important as Blass concluded that perhaps obedience is in fact a universal social behaviour and culture therefore doesn't affect obedience much.
• Socialisation - developmental psychology

  • Socialisation refers to the way in which people acquire the beliefs, values and attitudes of their culture. We are socialised by parents, teachers, peers, religion and the media. Through these sources we learn about our culture and how to behave in order to fit in and be accepted. The need to belong is an important drive for human beings and therefore learning the social and cultural norms of our community are a critical part of our development
• Unexpected findings and interaction effects

  • A milgram replication conducted in India returned a surprising result - despite a high power distance score of 77% (hofstede 2017) the study found a distincly low rate of obedience of just 42.5% (Gupta 1983)
  • There was also an interesting gender result - the females were considerably less obedient than males.
  • However, Rajagopalan (1992) reported that, although Indian women may be expected to be submissive in some situations, when it comes to family and the household, Indian women have the authority. Mothers are held in high regard, can be relatively independent and make all the important family decisions. They can also demand absolute obedience from their children (Rao and Rao 1985)
• Issues and debates

  • cross-cultural studies can be helpful in assessing the extent to which behaviours are seen as being caused by nature or nurture
  • Eg, if obedience levels were high the world over, despite exposure to differing cultural norms, one might regard obedience as biological, a product of genes as opposed to experience. However, if obedience levels vary broadly from culture to culture, one might consider nurture to play the more important role
  • this is important because understanding the origins of destructive obedience is necessary in order to determine how to prevent future atrocities