social psychology: obedience

• Social psychology


  Aspects of human behaviour that involve the individual's relationship to other persons, groups and society, including cultural influences on behaviour
• Social psychology


  • Assumes that other people can affect our behaviour, thought processes, and emotions
  • Suggests that the social situation can affect our behaviour, thought processes and emotions
  • Being in groups in society affects our behaviour. We respond differently to people depending on the group that they are in, and we tend to favour people who are members of groups to which we belong
  • The roles that we play in society can also affect our behaviour
• Roles


  The expectations, responsibilities, and behaviours we adopt in certain situations
• Social influence


  When an individual's behaviour, attitudes or emotions are affected by someone else
• Obedience


  Obeying direct orders from someone in authority
• Compliance


  Going along with what someone says, while not necessarily agreeing with it
• Dissenting


  Rejecting the orders, not doing what they are told to do
• Internalising


  Obeying with agreement
• Conformity


  Adopting the behaviours & attitudes to those around you
• Milgram wanted to see how far volunteer participants would be similarly obedient to inhumane orders: how far would they go in giving electric shocks to someone who they believed to be just another participant
• Milgram's procedure


  1. Recruited a sample of 40 men in the New Haven area of Connecticut

  2. Told participants the experiment aimed to see how punishment affected learning

  3. Rigged the drawing so the naive subject was always the teacher

  4. The teacher was asked to read a series of word pairs to the learner, and then read the first word of the pair along with four terms. The learner had to indicate which of the four terms was correct

  5. If the learner got a response wrong, the teacher was told to give them an electric shock. The voltage was to be increased by 15 volts every time

  6. The learner's responses were pre-set. He did not protest until 300 volts was reached
• 26 out of the 40 men (65%) who participated in the experiment continued to obey to the maximum of 450 volts
• Many of the participants showed visible signs of distress: they were observed to protest, twitch nervously, and laugh nervously. Some participants remained calm throughout
• Milgram demonstrated that social influence is strong, and that people tend to obey orders, even when this causes them distress
• Factors that led to obedience in Milgram's study


  • Yale University is a prestigious institution and therefore people believe that it is unlikely to allow anything unethical to occur
  • The study seemed to have a worthy cause - to learn about memory
  • The participant had volunteered and had made a commitment
  • The participant was paid and so felt an obligation
• Milgram found a slight reduction in obedience when the study was conducted in a less reputable setting (Bridgeport) compared to the original Yale University setting
• Milgram's agency theory suggests that people have two states, or ways of acting: the autonomous state and the agentic state
• Milgram's agency theory suggests that people's tendency to obey people has a useful function: it helps to keep society running smoothly because people abide by the rules instead of acting independently
• Agency theory


  Milgram's theory that people have two states - autonomous and agentic - and in the agentic state they allow someone else to direct their behaviour
• Agency theory


  • Helps to maintain society running smoothly because people abide by the rules instead of acting independently
  • Suggests the agentic state can be explained through evolution as a survival strategy
• Autonomous state


  The person believes they have power, freely choose their own behaviour and are guided by their own moral code
• Agentic state


  The person allows someone else to direct their behaviour, assuming the other person is responsible for the consequences
• Milgram suggests the agentic state is learned in childhood from parents and in school, and reinforced by the legal system in adulthood
• Moral strain


  The conflict the participants experienced between obeying the experimenter and going against their own moral values
• Social Impact Theory


  Latane's theory that the presence of others causes changes in a person's behaviour, cognition or emotion, and the likelihood of responding to social influence increases with the strength, immediacy and number of the sources
• Obedience will be greatest to authority figures who are perceived to be legitimate, who are close to the individual and who are great in number
• Increasing the number of sources beyond about 4 or 5 has diminishing effects on the likelihood of obedience
• Multiplication of impact


  Where social influence becomes stronger as strength, immediacy and number of sources increase
• Division of impact


  Where social influence becomes weaker, for example if the target has an ally or group of allies
• Factors affecting obedience and dissent

  • Individual differences
  • Situational variables
  • Culture
• Individual differences


  • Personality
  • Gender
• Locus of control


  The extent people feel they are in control of their own actions and lives
• People with an internal locus of control tend to believe that they are responsible for their own actions
• People with an external locus of control believe that their behaviour is largely out of their control
• Authoritarianism


  A personality trait characterised by hostility towards people of a different race, social group, age, sexuality or other minority, and seeing them as subordinate to themselves
• Evidence for authoritarianism and obedience

  • Milgram and Elms (1966) found obedient participants had higher authoritarianism scores
  • Dambrun & Varine (2010) found high authoritarianism scores meant participants were more likely to be obedient
• Empathy


  A personality trait that could influence obedience, as people high in empathy may be less likely to harm others
• Burger (2009) found that although people high in empathy were more likely to protest, this did not translate into lower obedience levels
• Gender


  Another individual difference that may affect obedience
• Gender differences in obedience

  • Milgram found female teachers were virtually identical to males in obedience levels
  • Khan & Mann (1974) found women were far less obedient than men, possibly due to female teachers feeling solidarity with female learners