5. AQA A-Level Psychology Key Content

what are the 3 explanations of obedience

legitimacy of authority, graduated commitment, agentic state

legitimacy of authority

most societies are structured where people in certain positions hold power of others, and that they are trustworthy usually in uniform e.g. Bickman hospital with nurses

graduated commitment

when told to do a trivial task people refuse to carry out more difficult tasks to appear consistent e.g. Milgram’s pts giving gradually more painful shocks

the agentic state

when someone sees themselves as acting as an agent for someone else’s needs and separates their will from responsibility of it e.g. Milgram since pts are carrying out orders

legitimacy of authority (evaluation)

Bickman - confederates were 2x as likely to obey the confederate dressed as a security guard suggesting uniform gives more authority

Milgram - reduced experimenters authority by using an ordinary member of the public, obedience dropped to 20%

graduated commitment (evaluation)

supported by Milgram’s study as it showed that a gradual increase in voltage led to more commitment rather than bigger increases in voltage

agentic state (evaluation)

can assume that pts were acting in agentic state and following experimenters orders since they were captured asking who is responsible if anything happens

what are the 5 factors that Adorno concluded made up the authoritarian personality

tending to be especially obedient to authority

extreme respect for those with authority

contempt for people with inferior social status

view society as failing and needing strong leaders

inflexible in outlook

what scale was used to measure the authoritarian personality

f scale e.g. obedience and respect for authority

what were Adornos findings from his study on over 2000 white Americans

ppl who scored higher on the scale were identified as strong humans

strong correlation between authoritarian personality and prejudice

what might a 3rd factor be in the correlation between authoritarian personality and obedience and why is this explanation therefore limited

lower levels of education, based on a correlation meaning it cannot predict causation

why are personality / dispositional explanations limited when trying to explain obedience for the general population

obedience could be due to many different reasons

what are the origins of the authoritarian personality

childhood because of harsh parenting

create resentment / hostility

what is resisting social influence - being independant

behaviour that is not altered despite pressured to obey

what is social support

the Prescence of other people who resist pressures to conform or obey

how can social support impact conformity

Asch - Prescence of another person who went against the group gave social support, makes person feel more confident

how can social support influence research support

if a pts had poor vision (thick glasses) the real pts conformed less than normal since its assumed they cant judge line length very well

how can social support impact obedience

Milgram - one of the variations included a confederate who was disobedient to the teacher, obedience dropped from 65% to 10%

what is prior commitment

once a person has committed to something before they are less likely to change their opinion compared to if that opinion had been private

what supports prior commitment

in an Asch variation pts gave the real answer before the confederates who all gave a different answer and when offered to reconsider they didnt