Definitions & difference
What is obedience?
Behaving as instructed by a person of a higher hierarchy
Who were the Ps?
American males
Define realibility?
This is when findings from a test/ measurement is consistent
State two instances where authority was varied
Experimenter wearing or no wearing lab coat
Location at Yale or seedy office
What is the personality type to explain dispositional explanation of obedience
Authoritarian personality
Obedience occurs because the individuals feels they ahve little
choice
What was the task?
To read out word pairs to test memory of the learner and administer shock if they miss it
Milgram's work was criticised on two counts of validity. What are they?
Internal and external validity
What did obedience percentage dropped to when experimenter wore no uniform and when the study was moved to seedy office
Seedy office is 48%
What test was used by Adorno to measure authoritarian personality
F scale
In conformity yielding to group pressure is always
implicit
What was the highest voltage?
How many Ps fully obeyed?
How many stopped at 300v?
450
65%
100%
What were the evidence for Milgram's study lacking internal validity?
Video footage of experimenter remaining calm
Comments form experiment that Yale will not kill someone
Define legitimate authority
Legitimate social power is held by authority figures whose role is defined by society. This usually gives them the right to exert control over the behaviour of others, we accept this due to the way we are brought up. Uniforms are often a sign of legitimate authority E.g. we are likely to obey the police
Explain authoritarian personality in three sentences
Authoritarian personalities are likely to adhere to conventional values and have a belief in absolute obedience or submission to authority.
They are more susceptible to obeying those in authority.
They are likely to be submissive of those in higher authority and dismissive of those lower in status.
Formed in childhood due to harsh parenting where they are expected to be loyal otherwise they get punished
In obedience, the instruction for action is always
explicit
Who was the naive Ps & Who was the confederate?
How were they assigned to their roles?
Teacher was the naive Ps
Learner was the confederate?
They were assigned by casting lots
What is the difference between internal & external validity?
Internal validity: This is the extent to which the finding of the experiment can be attributed to the effect of IV (and not for example due to demand characteristics, or confounding variables).
External validity: The extent to which research findings can be generalised. It has high external validity if the results can be generalised to other populations (population validity), other situations outside the research setting/real life (ecological validity) and other times (temporal validity)
Explain agentic state
Milgram’s agency theory states that people operate on two levels:
As autonomous individuals behaving voluntarily & aware of theconsequences of their actions
On the Agentic level seeing themselves as the agents of others and not responsible for their actions
The consequences of moving to the agentic level (the agentic shift) is that the individuals attribute responsibility for their actions to the person in authority. At this level Milgram argued people mindlessly accept the orders of the person seen as being responsible for the situation.
What are the methodological problems with the F scale?
All questions are worded in the same direction
No filler questions
No lie detector questions. Might be influenced by social desirability bias
Therefore question the internal validity of the study.
State two differences between obedience & conformity
Conformity can occur between equal status, obedience occurs within a hierarchy
conformity-Emphasis is on acceptance, obedience emphasis is on power
Identify 3 ethical issues in Milgram's study and explain how they occured within the study.
Deception- aim of the study, identity of Ps, deceived about the shock
Right to withdraw was not clear as experimenter pressured them to continue
Fully informed consent not given since they were deceived.
What were the evidence for Milgram's study lacking external validity
Used all males so we cannot generalise to females
used all Americans being individualistic so we cannot generalise to collectivist cultures
Conducted in Mccarthy era so we cannot generalise to modern times
Explain one criticism against the agentic state theory
All Ps were exposed to the same situation so obedience could be due to dispositional factors e.g personality or personal experience
OR
Contradictory research from the hospital study where the nurses remained autonomous even though instruction was coming from a doctor
Explain the key supporting study of authoritarian perosnality
A:Compared between 20 obedient & 20 disobedient groups
P: They completed 3 measures: F scle, open-ended questions & MMPI
F: Little difference in MMPI, great diffrence in Fscale, obedient Ps were less closer to their fathers, see experimenter as an authority figure and learner less so.
C: Ps with authoritarian personality are more likely to have obeyed.