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Factors Affecting Obedience - Coggle Diagram
Factors Affecting Obedience
Personality Factors
Authoritarian Personality
Harsh parenting leads to submissiveness to authority and high levels of obedience. (Adorno et Al 1950)
Internal and External Locus of Control
Miller (1975) showed that externals were more likely to obey dangerous orders than internals.
Evaluation
Elms and Milgram (1966) found fully obedient participants score higher on the f-scale than defiant participants. This however does nto show a casual link between authoritarianism and obedience
Internal locus of control does not predict defiance. In Austria they found no difference between obedient and defiant participants (Schurz 1985)
There is application to the world of work, personality tests can be used to help match people to jobs requiring different obedience levels
Situation Factors
Legitimacy
Reducing authority figures perceived legitimacy reduces obedience.
Proximity
Increased distance between authority figure and participant decreases obedience.
Behaviour of Others
Witnessing disobedience in others increases defiance
Evaluation
Meeus and Raajmakers (1995) found obedience drops when experimenter absent (36%) and two peers rebel (16%). However this works with personality.
Application to rule breaking, changing wording of country side rules increases the strength of the message (Gramann et al 1995)
Gender
Males and females are virtually identical when it comes to obedience, Milgram, Burger found the same results
Sheridan and King (1972)- Shock Live Puppy
found females more compliant
Kilnam and Mann- Milgram replication in Australia
found males to be more compliant
Could depend on gender combination of teacher, learner and experimenter
Culture
Individualistic
behave more independently and resist conformality
more likely to be obedient
Collectivistic
behave as a collective group based on interdependence
co-operation and compliance is important for stability