Summary A* AQA Psychology Notes on Explanations for Obedience (3/6 spec point for Social Influence)
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Course
Social Influence
Institution
AQA
These notes got me an A* as they are a combination of all the best AO1 and AO3 from the Hodder Education AQA textbook, Illuminate Publishing AQA textbook and my own class notes. They are worded to score highly on mark schemes as I have studied all past paper questions for Social Influence.
● Explanations for obedience: agentic state and legitimacy of authority,
and situational variables affecting obedience including proximity and
location, as investigated by Milgram, and uniform. Dispositional
explanation for obedience: the Authoritarian Personality.
Obedience
- A form of social influence where someone acts in response to satisfy a direct order from
authority
- Dictators can use obedience through power
- People obey due to dispositional factors, upbringing, scared of consequence etc
MILGRAM’S study is not an experiment, but the variations are
To see if naive participants would go against their values to obey an authority figure and test the
“germans are different hypothesis” (Nazi’s following orders in the Holocaust would not have
happened in other countries)
Milgram expected less than 4% to be obedient all the way to 450V
Sample
- Newspaper advert for study at Yale University
- Volunteer sample of 40 american males aged 20-50 from New Haven
- Paid $4 dollars and believed they were taking part in an experiment on memory
- Gained presumptive consent, not informed
Procedure
- Controlled lab environment for a structured observation
- Mr Wallace was a confederate acting as the participant in the shock chair as the ‘learner’
- Participant acted as ‘teacher’ and told that the roles were allocated randomly
- Participant asked learner a series of word association questions and learner responded
with pre recorded taped answers
- Incorrect answers warranted a shock increasing by 15V every time
- Started at 15V shock button labeled ‘slight shock’ and ended at 450V shock button
labelled ‘XXX danger’
- The real participant received a shock of 45V to show that the device was working
- At 150V Mr Wallace began protesting, at 300V he stopped answering questions and said
he felt heart problems, at 315V he screamed loudly and at 330V he was silent.
- If participant hesitated 4 ‘prods’ were used (‘the experiment requires you to continue’) If
all 4 were used by Experimenter Mr Williams and the observation would stop
, Results
Quantitative data
- All participants obedient up to 300V (point where learner refused to answer questions)
- 65% of participants continued all the way to 450V
Qualitative data
- Participants showed signs of distress e.g. digging nails into flesh
- 14 participants showed nervous laughter
- 3 participants had seizures
- A few showed no signs of discomfort and dutifully followed instructions
Conclusion
“Germans are different hypothesis” is wrong, americans showed full obedience too
High levels of obedience due to
- Trustworthy setting of prestigious Yale University
- Study seemed a worthy cause (memory)
- Mr Wallace appeared to be willing and he played ‘learner’ by chance
- P’s volunteered and were paid, sense of obligation
- P’s assured shocks were painful but would not ‘cause lasting damage’
- Experimenter wore a white lab coat
Evaluation
+ Hoffling et al supporting evidence for real life application. Conducted study in real
hospital where nurses were telephoned by Dr Smith who asked them to give an
unknown drug to a patient. 95% did as requested despite the dosage being double.
+ Sheridan and King supporting evidence for androcentrism as females can be MORE
obedient. Shocked puppies until gas made them pass out (p’s thought they killed it),
54% of males and 100% of females obeyed up until the full voltage.
- Lacks population validity as sample is 40 white males from New Haven. Not
generalisable due to culture bias. Meeus and Faaijimakers found highest recorded
obedience level with the Milgram Paradigm of 90% in spanish participants. The lowest
was australia with 28%.
- Lacks temporal validity as ethical guidelines would not allow for a current day replication.
Burger modified the study in 2009 but the procedures were too different to allow for a
true comparison of results
- Unethical. Deception (believed shocks were real) therefore lacked fully informed
consent. But this could be justified as other wise risk of demand characteristics
- Unethical. Caused psychological harm (3 p’s had seizures)
+ Participants fully debriefed after and only 2% regretted taking part, 74% thought they
had learned something useful about themselves. All 40 p’s had psychiatric assessments
a year later and none of them shown any damage.
+ High reliability as very controlled (scripted pre-recorded) so is repeatable
- Potentially low internal validity as Perry traced the original participants and found that
only about 50% had believed the shocks to be real
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