1 2 obedience

True. The participant was assigned the role of 'Teacher' in Milgram's study. One of Milgram's confederates was assigned the role of 'Learner'.

The agentic state is made possible by the presence of a legitimate authority figure who has the status/position to issue demands or orders.

For an authority figure to have legitimate authority, it is necessary to some extent for social hierarchies to exist.

True. A binding factor means that aspects of a situation (e.g., the presence of a legitimate authority) allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour.

b. Allowing someone else to take charge of a situation is preferable for many people as it reduces cognitive load. Reducing cognitive load frees up someone's time (and mental effort), allowing them to get on with more enjoyable (or mundane) tasks.

False. When an individual is in an agentic state, they feel removed from their actions.

a. Research by Bickman (1974) shows that people are more likely to obey someone dressed as a security guard than when they are dressed as a milkman or in plain clothes. A uniform shows authority, even when it is not a police uniform.

c. Examples of acting in an agentic state towards an authority figure can be seen in acts of atrocity throughout history, making this explanation high in external validity.

True. The agentic state explanation only offers a situational explanation of obedience, which is a limitation. Agentic state cannot explain why some people do not obey, even when they would be justified in blaming someone else for their actions, which is a dispositional explanation.

Blass & Schmitt (2001) found the participants blamed the experimenter, stating that the experimenter was the legitimate authority and therefore to blame in the situation.

c. Both the agentic state and legitimacy of authority explanations for obedience are deterministic. They imply that those who commit acts of destructive obedience have no control over their actions, therefore no free will.

Milgram's initial hypothesis was that Germans must be different from all other nations due to their involvement in the Holocaust. This is known as a dispositional hypothesis.

A pilot study is a small-scale trial of a proposed study in order to test the effectiveness of the procedure and to identify where improvements are needed.

a. Milgram's shock generator had 15-volt intervals. This was one of the ways in which it was easy for participants to harm the Learner as the shocks increased gradually.

The experimenter provided prompts if the Teacher (participant) seemed reluctant to go any further with the procedure. An example of a prompt is, 'The experiment requires that you continue'.

b. 65% of participants went up to 450 volts (labelled 'Extreme Shock XXX' on the generator). 100% of participants went up to 300 volts.

c. The personality of the participants who went to 450 volts is not a binding factor. The results show that destructive obedience is not a result of nationality or personal factors but is instead made possible by specific situational factors.

Hofling's study supports Milgram's findings, as almost all of the nurses obeyed a doctor to administer a higher drug dose than recommended. This reinforces the idea that harmful acts can be committed in the presence of a legitimate authority.

b. Milgram's study has been accused of lacking internal validity. Participants may have realised that the shocks were fake, so they were simply 'playing along' rather than genuinely believing that they were administering real shocks.

True. The study has many ethical issues:

Proximity refers to how close to/far away someone or something is.

In the proximity variation, Milgram wanted to explore the idea that obedience decreases as proximity increases (and vice versa).

b. In Milgram's study, when the Teacher and the Learner were in the same room, obedience dropped from 65% to 40%. Obedience was measured as the number of participants who went to 450 volts.

Research by Bickman (1974) showed that people were more likely to obey a confederate dressed as a security guard than a milkman or a man in plain clothes.

False. Obedience towards authority figures is something that is culturally transmitted. Most cultures instill respect for authority and status, which is learned from childhood.

Yale University is a highly prestigious college with a reputation for excellence, which makes it a binding factor in Milgram's study. Yale University has high status and prestige, i.e., participants were 'helping science', making obedience more likely.

a. In the 'location' variation, Milgram ran the study in a run-down building. Participants were told the experiment was being run by a research association; no mention was made of Yale University.

b. In Milgram's proximity variable, the Teacher had to place the Learner's hand on the shock plate, which affected the study's validity. The Learner would have had to fake their pain convincingly, meaning that the participants may have doubted how genuine the shocks were.

True. A strength of Bickman's study (the effect of a uniform on obedience) was that it used naive participants. This means that it has high ecological validity due to the participants' lack of awareness of their participation in the study.

a. Milgram stuck to the same standardised procedure in all of the variations, which means that the results are easy to compare to check for reliability.

True. Milgram's conclusion that situational variables explain obedience could be used as an excuse to justify acts of cruelty. Acts of cruelty or brutality could be excused as 'the situation made me do it'.

A dispositional explanation of obedience is one that is based on the characteristics of an individual, e.g., personality traits.

Adorno's theory falls under the nurture side of the debate as it claims that personality develops as a result of childhood experiences rather than being inherited.

c. They are flexible in their opinions and see the world in a relaxed, open-minded way. People with an authoritarian personality are ‘black and white’ in their opinions and see the world in a rigid, inflexible way.

True. More than 2,000 middle-class white Americans completed the F-scale.

b. The sample used in Adorono's F-scale research is problematic because it shows sample bias. The sample demographic did not represent all racial and ethnic groups in the USA at the time.

Adorno suggested that the authoritarian personality forms during childhood as a result of having strict parents who do not allow or encourage free will in their children.

True. Adorno’s F-scale questionnaire is replicable as it uses standardised questions, i.e., all participants answer the same questions, which can be used repeatedly with other samples.

Adorno's F-scale could be tested for reliability using the test-retest method: the same participants answer the same questions at a later date, then their responses are correlated in terms of how consistent they are from one test to the other.

Elms & Milgram (1966) included open questions in their research on the authoritarian personality, which is a strength because it allows participants to answer freely, thus increasing validity.

a and c. Adorno's theory is overly simplistic, which means that it is both deterministic and reductionist. The theory reduces a complex variable (personality) to a score on a scale (reductionist). The theory determines that if you possess specific personality traits, then you will be obedient, regardless of the situation (deterministic).