social influence

• Dispositional explanations of obedience have the limitation of political bias
• The F scale only measures the tendency towards a form of right wing ideology
• Dispositional explanations of obedience have the limitation of providing a limited explanation
• Dispositional explanations cannot explain all obedient behaviour in the majority of a country's population, for example anti-Semitism in Germany
• A different explanation could be that Germans identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the outgroup of the Jews, which is a social identity theory approach
• A counterargument to research support of the authoritarian personality is that when individuals were analysed, many had characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians such as not having hostile attitudes or unusual levels of punishment from parents in childhood
• This means the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex and unlikely to be a useful predictor of obedience
• A strength of the authoritarian personality is that Milgram interviewed the small sample of people who had been fully obedient and all completed the F scale, scoring significantly higher overall than a comparison group of some disobedient participants
• Adorno's research on the authoritarian personality found that people who scored high on the F scale identified with 'strong' people and were contemptuous of the weak, conscious of their status and showed extreme respect to higher authority, and found a strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• Adorno's research procedure on the authoritarian personality


  More than 2000 middle class white Americans and their unconscious attitude towards other racial groups were studied. 2 researchers developed measurement scales including the potential-for-fascism scale (F scale) with statements like "obedience and respect for authority are the important virtues for children to learn"
• Origins of the authoritarian personality


  Adorno suggests the authoritarian personality forms in childhood, as a result of harsh parents, parenting style usually featuring strict discipline, conditional love, unrealistic standards, and severe criticism of perceived failing, creating resentment and hostility in a child that they cannot express directly to parents, so they displace onto others who they deem to be weaker (psychodynamic explanation)
• Authoritarian personality


  Any behaviour that highlights the importance of the individual's personality. Adorno et al said people with an authoritarian personality show extreme respect and submissiveness, view society as weaker than it once was so needs strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love for a country and family, and show contempt (no respect) for people of inferior social status, have an inflexible outlook of the world, either want right or wrong, and are uncomfortable with uncertainty
• A limitation of legitimacy of authority being an explanation of obedience is that it does not account for all disobedience, as seen in the nurses in hospital study and/or Milgram's study, where people may just be more disobedient than others due to innate tendencies to obey or disobey, which may have more influence on obedience than the legitimacy of authority
• A strength of situational explanations for obedience is that they provide a useful account for cultural differences in obedience, as found in Milgram-like studies where 16% of female Australian participants went up to 450 volts but 85% of German participants did, showing that in some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate, reflecting the way society is structured
• A limitation of the agentic shift is that it does not explain the findings about disobedience, e.g. in one study it was found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient, as the doctor was the authority but the nurses stayed autonomous, meaning the agentic shift only accounts for some situations of obedience
• A strength of the agentic state is that Milgram's own studies support the role of the agentic state on obedience, as most participants resisted and asked who was responsible, and when the experimenter said they were, most carried on with no objections
• Legitimacy of authority


  We are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us justified by the individual's position of power within the social hierarchy. Consequences of legitimacy of authority: some people are granted the power to punish others e.g. police and criminals, and we accept this at a very young age. Destructive authority occurs when issues arise when the legitimacy of authority becomes destructive e.g. Hitler, Stalin
• Binding factors


  Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the effects of their behaviour, which reduces their moral strain, e.g. shifting responsibility to the victim, denying the damage they were doing (e.g. "the victim should have never volunteered")
• Autonomous state


  Independent and free state, and the shift from this state to the agentic state is called the agentic shift. Milgram proposed the agentic shift occurs when a person perceives someone else as an authority (higher rank in the social hierarchy)
• Agentic state


  A mental state where we feel no responsibility for our actions as we feel we are working for an authority figure (frees us from our conscious), and the individual may feel moral strain as they know they are wrong but feel powerless and have to obey
• A limitation of using situational variables to explain obedience is that the situational perspective can offer an excuse (alibi) for evil behaviour, for example stating that the Nazis were simply just obeying orders, as Milgram ignores dispositional factors such as personality, implying the Nazis were victims of situational factors out of their control
• A counterpoint to the cross-cultural replication study of Milgram is that replications of Milgram's study are not very cross-cultural, as Peter Smith and Michael Bond only did two replications in non-Western countries (India and Jordan), the rest were in Spain, Scotland, and Australia, which are not that culturally different, therefore it may not be appropriate to conclude Milgram's findings apply to most cultures
• A strength of Milgram's study is the realistic study testing obedience in Dutch participants, where participants were ordered to say stressful things in an interview to someone who was desperate for a job, and 90% obeyed. This also investigated proximity, where obedience decreased when the person giving orders was not there, suggesting Milgram's findings are not just limited to Americans and males but are applicable to females and other cultures too
• A strength of uniform in explaining obedience is the research support from the field experiment in NYC, where 3 confederates dressed in different outfits (jacket and tie, milkman's outfit, security guard's uniform) and each stood in the street asking passers-by to do tasks, and people were twice as likely to obey the security guard than the jacket and tie
• How Milgram investigated if uniform affects obedience


  In the baseline, the experimenter wore a lab coat. In one variation, the experimenter had to leave due to an 'inconvenient phone call', and the study was taken over by a normal member of the public, which caused obedience to drop to 20% (the lowest of these variations). The explanation is that uniforms are widely recognised symbols of authority, and we accept that the person has a right to expect obedience as their authority is legitimate
• How Milgram investigated if location affects obedience


  He conducted a variation in a run-down office rather than the prestigious Yale University. Obedience fell from 65% to 47.5%. The explanation is that Yale University gave the study legitimacy and authority, and participants perceived that the experimenter shared the legitimacy of the university, and that obedience was expected. However, obedience was still high because participants perceived the scientific nature of the procedure
• How Milgram investigated if proximity affects obedience


  In the baseline study, teachers could hear the learner but not see them. In the proximity version, the teacher and learner were in the same room, and obedience dropped from 65% to 40%. In the touch proximity version, the teacher had to force the learner's hand onto an electroshock plate when they refused to answer a question, and obedience dropped to 30%. In the remote instruction variation, the experimenter left the room and gave instructions to the teacher by telephone, and obedience reduced to 20.5%, with participants frequently pretending to give shocks. The explanation is that decreased proximity allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the consequences of their actions
• Situational variables that Milgram suggested affect obedience


  • Proximity
  • Location
  • Uniform
• A limitation of Milgram's study is that his conclusions about blind obedience may not be justified, and there may be an alternative interpretation. Haslam et al showed that when Milgram's participants were told "you have no other choice, you must go on", they refused, suggesting that a social identity theory, where participants will obey if they identify with the scientific aims of the research, may be a more valid interpretation of Milgram's findings
• A counterpoint for the low internal validity of Milgram's research is that Charles Sheridan and Richard King conducted a study with a procedure like Milgram's, using real shocks to a puppy, and despite the real stress from the animal, many participants delivered what they thought was a fatal shock, suggesting the effects in Milgram's study are genuine
• A limitation of Milgram's research is the low internal validity, as Milgram reported that 75% of participants said they believed the shocks were real, but Martin and Orne argue that participants behaved as they did because they did not believe the set-up, and Gina Perry listened to tapes of Milgram's participants and only 1/2 believed the shocks were real, displaying that participants may have been displaying demand characteristics to fulfil the aim of the study
• A strength of Milgram's research is the research support, as Milgram's study was replicated on a French TV show (documentary), where participants believed they were being paid to deliver shocks and ordered by the presenter, and 80% of participants delivered the maximum 460 volt shocks to an apparently unconscious man, with behaviour almost identical to Milgram's study (nervous laughter, nail biting), supporting Milgram's findings about obedience to authority and that it was not just due to special circumstances
• Milgram (1963) set out to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures, as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. He wanted to see if authority figures such as Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders, and whether we could call them all accomplices
• Milgram's conclusions from his study were that German people were not different, as Americans were also willing to obey orders that were harmful, and he suspected there are other factors involved that encourage obedience
• Before and after Milgram's study, psychology students predicted that no more than 3% of participants would go to 450 volts, greatly underestimating the participants' obedience. All participants were debriefed that their behaviour was normal, and 84% said they were glad to have participated
• Milgram's baseline findings were that every participant delivered all shocks up to 300 volts, 12.5% stopped at 300 volts, and 65% continued to 450 volts (fully obedient). Milgram also collected qualitative data such as observations, and participants showed signs of extreme tension (sweating, groaning, digging, biting fingernails, some seizures, stuttering, trembling)
• Milgram's baseline procedure


  40 American men volunteered, there was a learner and experimenter (confederates), the participant was the "teacher", the teacher had to give the learner a shock every time a mistake was made on a memory test, and the shocks increased by 15 volts with each mistake up to 450 volts. The shocks were fake but labelled to be very dangerous
• Obedience


  Individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the order is normally a figure of authority
• Weaknesses of Zimbardo's study include overexaggeration, as the guards' behaviour differed between all of them, with 1/3 behaving brutally and 2/3 trying to help, so the conclusions were overexaggerated and not valid. It was argued that participants were not conforming, they were role-playing based on stereotypes, and there was a lack of realism as the study did not have the realism of a real prison. There were also ethical issues, as participants were subjected to physiological harm which could have been long-lasting
• Strengths of Zimbardo's research include validity, as prisoners and guards were randomly assigned to their roles, increasing the control Zimbardo had over the internal validity, and practical application, as the study meant practices were changed in US prisons to protect the vulnerable and make prisons safer