Flashcards
7: Obedience
Cards in this deck (6)
- 1Define obedienceFollowing the orders of a person of authority. Typically involves a lower-status individual behaving in a way that complies with the wishes of someone of higher status.
It is NOT conforming to the behaviours of individuals of equal status. - 2Describe Milgram's (1963) study of obedience1) Participants recruited for "learning and memory" experiment, and randomly assigned "Teacher" or "Learner".
2) Learner asked to memorise list of word pairs, Teacher tests memory and punishes mistakes using electric shocks with increasing voltage.
3) % of participants obeying decreased as voltage increased. Only 65% gave maximum shock. - 3Describe 4 factors that reduced obedience in Mailgram-Type experiments1) Victim proximity: lower obedience when Learner is in room, even lower when Teacher has to put Learner's hand onto plate.
2) Proximity of authority figure: Lower obedience when instructions given via telephone.
3) Legitimacy of authority figure: Obedience more likely in Yale lab than in downtown office. More obedience for Experimenter than another participant.
4) Presence of dissenters: When one confederate quits at 150v, and another at 210v, only 10% give highest shocks. Obedience disappears when another Experimenter dissents. - 4Provide 3 explanations for obedience in Mailgram-Type experiments1) Trust in authority: obedience is an appropriate response when authorities are trustworthy.
2) Gradual commitment
3) Role adoption - 5Describe the Stanford Prison Experiment1) Students randomly assigned Prisoner or Guard roles by coin flip. Prisoners arrested aggressively by real police and taken to "prison". Roles formalised by uniforms.
2) Tu control prisoners, guards could punish by giving press-ups, removal of food, denial of washing facilities, special privilege or solitary confinement cells.
3) After some days, guard showed increasing levels of cruelty and prisoners became dehumanised. Some prisoners had to be released.
4) Experiment prematurely stopped - 6Describe Zimbardo's conclusions and criticisms of themConclusions: the role was enough to produce behaviours. Serious implications about human nature. Evidence that situational factors rather than dispositional factors determine the way people will behave.
Criticism: participants were just role-playing based on stereotypical knowledge. Some guards were actually nice. Evidence from real world that people react differently in the same situation.
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- Psychology (Social Psychology) Flashcards on 7: Obedience, created by Cornelia C on 09/12/2018.
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