Obedience

• Obedience is a form of social influence in which a person follows an order, usually from an authority figure, because they have the power to punish.
• Milgram's shock experiment


  40 American men invited to a lab where they met another participant (confed) and they drew fixed lots so the "real" participant is always the 'teacher' and the confed is the 'learner'. The teacher asked the learner questions, if learner got question wrong the teacher has to shock the participant incrementally from 15 volts to 450 volts.
• All participants delivered shocks up to 300 volts
• 65% continued to the highest 450 volts
• Participants in Milgram's experiment

  • Showed signs of extreme tension
  • Many were seen sweating, trembling, mumbling etc.
• Alongside the 'learner' and 'teacher' there was also a experimenter. He wore a white lab coat and when the 'teacher' refused to administer shocks, he would use a series of prods to get the 'teacher' to do so.
• Milgram's shock experiment

  Limitation)Lacks ecological validity

  ->Carried out in a lab, under artificial conditions. Cannot generalise findings outside a laboratory.

  Limitation)Biased sample

  ->Only used male/American participants, cannot generalise findings to women/other countries.

  Strength)Used standardised procedure

  ->Allows Milgram to establish a cause and effect relationship
• Situational variables that affect obedience

  Proximity: In the original the teacher and learner were in different rooms. But in this variant, the T,L were in the same room. Obedience dropped from 60% -> 45%. In the touch-proximity variation the T had to put the L hand on the plate. Obedience dropped to 30%.

  Location: Milgram conducted a variation run a run-down office block rather than the prestigious Yale university. Obedience fell to 47.5%.

  Uniform: The experimenter was called off and replaced by an ordinary member of the public wearing regular clothes. The obedience rate dropped to 20%.
• Agentic state is when a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions because they are acting for a authority figure.

  In milgrams study the participants often asked "who is responsible if the learner is hurt" and the experimenter always expressed that they would take full responsibility.

  ->Evidence of a.p
• Autonomous state is when you behave according to your own principles and you feel responsibility for your own actions.

  The shift from autonomy to agency is called the agentic shift. Occurs when a person perceives somebody as an authority figure.
• Some of Milgram's participants said they wanted to stop, but felt powerless to do so. By minimising the damaging effect of their behaviour they minimised their moral strain. This is called binding factors.
• Legitimacy of authority is the idea that societies are hierarchical in a way where people like parents, teachers, officers hold authority over us. The authority they hold is "legitimate" because they are helping society run smoothly, and a bi-product of that is the power to punish us.

  In Milgram's study, the experimenter is seen to have legitimate authority because he holds scientific status.
• Dispositional explanations for obedience

  The authoritarian personality: A person who has an A.P favours an authoritarian society and admires obedience to authority figures. They are hostile to those of inferior status and obedient to those of higher status.

  Using an F-scale Adorno tested 2000 white American's unconscious attitudes towards minorities in order to measure their A.P.

  Limitation: Biased sample

  ->Due to the demographics at the time white Americans were very likely to have been diagnosed with an A.P