Obedience - Bickman (1974)

OUTLINE

Bickman's study was a field study conducted in Brooklyn, New York. Three male experimenters dressed as a civilian, a milkman or a guard, and asked them one of three things.

1. "Can you pick up this bag for me"
2. "This man is over-parked at the meter but doesn't have any change - give him a dime"
3. "Don't you know you have to stand on the other side of the pole ? This sign says no standing"

RESULTS

89% obeyed the guard, as he was a figure of authority with the power to punish.

57% obeyed the milkman, as he was a figure of authority.

33% obeyed the civilian.

CRITICISMS

1 - Because it was a field experiment, there was a lack of control over variables

• Extraneous variables (variables that can change the outcome such as noise, weather, or crowding which can't be controlled)
• These variables would be easier ti control in a laboratory setting but would reduce the experiment's ecological validity

2 - The participants were selected by opportunity sampling

• There was no knowledge of the person's circumstances or personality type.
• People could have an authoritarian personality, or be late.

3 - The study was unethical

• It was impossible to gain the participant's informed consent
• They also weren't debriefed
• This could've caused embarrassment or distress

4 - Results may be affected by gender

• All the experimenters were male, and people may be more likely to obey men than women.

5 - The study was in one city, in one country

• The study was culturally biased as it was conducted in an individualist culture.
• The results may vary if repeated in a collectivist culture

Obedience - Hofling et al

OUTLINE

22 nurses on night duty in a psychiatric hospital were phoned by 'Dr. Smith' , an unknown doctor, wo told the nurse to give a patient 20mg of Astroten, despite it being double the maximum dose of 10mg.

RESULTS

The drug was a placebo, so no patients were harmed. All but one of the nurses obeyed the orders given over the phone.

HOW TSF COULD AFFECT THIS

• The nurses were in a place of work, so the setting would ensure that they would be more obedient.
• The doctor was an authority figure with the power to punish, so the nurses were more likely to obey him.

Obedience - Milgram (1962)

PROCEDURE

This experiment was conducted at Yale university, America. 40 males aged 20-50 years old were asked to be 'teachers' to a man in another room. The participant had to ask the man in the other room (who was a confederate, so was not actually harmed) questions as part of a 'learning experiment'. When wrong answers were given, they would give them an electric shock, with the voltage increasing each time.

RESULTS

All of the participants gave the confederate at least 300 volts, whereas 65% of them gave him the lethal maximum of 450 volts.

TSF IN MILGRAM'S EXPERIMENT

Setting

• When Milgram's experiment was moved to a rundown office building in downtown Bridgeport, the amount of people giving the maximum of 450 volts fells from 65% to 47.5%

Culture

• When conducted in Austrailia, the amount of people which give the maximum voltage fell to 40%, as it is an individualist culture.
• In Italy, it rose to 80%, and 85% in Austria, as these are both collectivist cultures.

Power to Punish / Figure of Authority

• If the figures of authority were not present, the amount of people who gave the maximum voltage was reduced to 20%

Consensus

• When the study was repeated with one genuine participant and two disobeying confederates, only 10% delivered the maximum voltage.

CRITICISMS

1 -  It lacks ecological validity

• It was conducted in an artificial setting, so is subject to demand characteristics.

2 - It bypassed ethical guidelines

• Participants weren't provided with the right to withdraw
• Participants didn't give informed consent
• The participants were deceived as they weren't told the true reason for the experiment
• This could have caused distress, embarrassment or other long-term harm

3 - Individual differences weren't accounted for

• People naturally vary in how likely they are to obey despite other factors.

Obedience - TDF (Theory of Dispositional Factors)

Some people are more likely to obey because of their dispositional factors, these are factors associated with an individual's personality.

An authoritarian personality is a personality type which is prone to obedience. This was investigated by Adorno et al (1950). This appeared shortly after WW2 as an attempt to try to understand and explain antisemitism in Nazi Germany. People with this personality type are more likely to be bigoted and prejudiced, and are also more likely to obey.

Their research comprised of 2000+ college students from the USA. These were American,white,non-Jewish middle class people such as teachers, nurses and psychiatric patients. They were asked to grade their support of statements on a scale called the F-scale, with the F standing for fascism.

Authoritarian personality was believed to develop during childhood due to factors such as strict and controlling parents.

 This personality type consists of 4 characteristics:

• Someone who feels and active dislike of people from lower classes
• Someone with fixed and conventional ideas of right and wrong
• Someone who cannot deal with any uncertainty about the right way to behave and acceptable attitudes/beliefs
• Someone who is always willing to obey those of higher status than themselves.

Obedience - TSF (Theory of Situational Factors)

The theory of situational factors states that your situation determines your level of obedience.
This is affected by 5 factors.

• Setting - the more prestigious/formal, the more likely you are to obey.

• Culture - collectivist cultures are more likely to obey.

• Power to Punish - if someone has a high power to punish you are more likely to obey them.

• Consensus - if more people obey you are more likely to obey

• Authority Figure/ Uniform - if an authority figure is present, you are more likely to obey.

Obedience - Key Concepts

Authority - A level of status or power

Obedience - Following orders or commands from people in authority

Defiance - Resisting roders or commands from people in authority

Denial of responsibility - Passing responsibility of an act onto somebody else, usually higher in authority.

Individualist culture - The individual's rights are valued over others. The opposite is a collectivist culture.

Memory - Applications

MEMORY AIDS

Memory aids have been developed and are often used in education. These are cues, mind maps, and imagery.

Cues

• Help retrieve information from the LTM and overcome accessibility problems.
• Cues can trigger memories through the senses eg - a smell
• Formal use - Police provides verbal/visual cues to reconstruct crimes. They use cues to help trigger witnesses' memories.
• Informal use -  Such as 'retracing steps' to remember  where you left something
• In education - Could give hints, such as the first letter of the word or visual cues.

Mind Mapping

• Reflects how the brain is organised
• Created by Buzan in the 1960's

Imagery

• We remember things better when it is attached to an image. This is as we dual encode this information so we can recall it easily. This means that it is remembered acoustically and visually.