Factors Affecting Obedience

Authoritarian personality

(AO1)

• Authoritarian personality is caused by parent child relationships that are hierarchical and threaten the child into compliance.

• Children suffer emotionally from suppressing their feeling of aggression towards their parents. The child, being frustrated by upbringing follows rules and become more obedient

• The person also learns to be oppressive to those they see as inferior to them in the social hierarchy

A strength that authoritarian personality can affect obedience

(AO3)

I: There is evidence from Elms and Milgram that supports the idea personality factors can affect obedience

J: They found when comparing 20 fully obedient participant in Milgram’s studies against 20 disobedient participants, the obedient participants had significantly higher authoritarian personality scores on the F scale.

E: This demonstrates that obedience levels can be linked to personality factors

Internal Locus of Control

(AO1)

• someone with a high internal locus of control believes that they are the ones personally in control and take more responsibility for their actions

• They are also more likely to disobey as they don’t see authoritative figures as more powerful than them

External Locus of Control

(AO1)

• Someone with a high external locus of control would believe they have no control over the world and external factors lead to their behaviour.

• They tend to take a less responsibility and blame others for their actions

• They are more obedient so they can shift responsibility onto their superiors

Strength of Locus of control affecting obedience

(AO3)

I: There is evidence from Oliner and Oliner that supports locus of control as an explanation for obedience.

J: They found that the 406 rescuers in World War II, who had resisted orders, had a higher internal locus of control in comparison to the 126 people who followed orders.

E: This suggests that some personality traits do impact the level of obedience in individuals

Weakness of Locus of control affecting obedience

(AO3)

I: However, there is contradictory evidence by Schurz that discredits this idea

J: Participants were instructed to give painful dose of ultrasound to a female student. The participant who are free obedient did not significantly differ to those who were disobedient in scores measuring the locus of control.

E: Therefore, some personality traits may have a limited impact on obedience

Gender affecting obedience

(AO1)

Moral reasoning can explain how gender affects obedience. It states men proceed with an ‘ethics of justice’ when decision making and women have an ‘ethics of care’.

• Men value fairness and justice while women are more nurturing of those in need

• Also when instructed to cause harm men will be more obedient due to feelings of obligation while women will be less obedient in order to support the person from being harmed

Strength that gender affects obedience

(AO3)

I: There is evidence from Gilligan and Attanucci’s study on moral dilemmas that supports gender as a factor that affects obedience.

J: They found men and women differ in terms of their concerns. Men were more preoccupied with fairness while women were more concerned about care (avoiding harm and exploitation)

E: This suggests that women will be less obedient in tasks that require harming others showing gender can influence obedience

Weakness that gender affects obedience

(AO3)

I: A weakness is contradictory evidence by Burger

J: His experiment concluded with the 29 men and 41 women both having similar levels of obedience despite their opposing genders

E: This suggests gender may not be an influential factor in determining obedience levels