Psychological Processes that May Be Involved in Obedience to Authority

Psychological Processes that May Be Involved in Obedience to Authority

Obedience is the following of someone else's instructions or orders to

do something. The instructions are usually from someone who has

authority such as a parent or teacher. Milgram proposed the agentic

state theory; this is where we act as an agent of someone who has

authority, it means that we find it easy to deny personal

responsibility for our actions because we have just been following

orders or doing our job. In 1950 Adorno expressed his beliefs that

personality was a better explanation of obedience. Adorno believed

that some people have an 'Authoritarian Personality', this means that

they are likely to be obedient yet prejudiced. Adorno believed that

your childhood experiences play a key role in the growth of an

authoritarian personality. Individuals with this type of personality

often have certain characteristics such as; rigid beliefs in

conventional values, general opposition to other groups,

discrimination to uncertainty or vagueness and obedient attitudes to

authority figures.

b) Outline the findings of one study of minority influence and give

one criticism of this study.

Moscovici undertook a study of minority influence in 1969. He wanted

to find out whether a minority could influence a majority of naïve

participants, reversing the usual direction of social influence.

Moscovici found that 32% of the majority conformed at least once,

showing a yielding to minority influence. However Moscovici focused on

the difference between the majority and the minority. In everyday

life, the difference is more complicated, as minorities typically have

l...

... middle of paper ...

...ce for

some. She also criticised Milgram for the great distress caused to

most if not all of his participants during and after the study.

Baumrind also expressed that Milgram's participants were not aware

that the study could cause conflict and distress, and therefore were

not in a position to give their cognisant consent. She also commented

on the fact that participants who asked to withdraw were told that

they had no choice but to go on. As shown by my examples a large

number of the studies carried out for social psychology have good and

bad points, they all show what they were aiming to for example

Zimbado's prison experiment showed conformity to social roles and

Milligram's experiment showed obedience. However it is rare that there

is an experiment without negative criticism about the way that it was

conducted.