Content
Furthermore, in both cases the effective use of the power requires that the power-holder continually monitor the behavior of the target to be sure that he or she is complying. This monitoring may itself lead to a sense of mistrust between the two individuals in the relationship. The power-holder feels (perhaps unjustly) that the target is only complying due to the monitoring, whereas the target feels (again perhaps unjustly) that the power-holder does not trust him or her.
- He designed a study in which he could observe the extent to which a person who presented himself as an authority would be able to produce obedience, even to the extent of leading people to cause harm to others.
- Indeed, one method of increasing one’s power is to become an expert in a domain.
- Milgram believed that the
teachers had acted in this way because they were pressured to do so by an
authority figure. - Let’s consider first the person part of the equation and then turn to consider how the person and the social situation work together to create effective leadership.
- The powerful ability of those in authority to control others was demonstrated in a remarkable set of studies performed by Stanley Milgram (1963).
Milgram’s controversial experiments generated a great deal of interest in the psychology of obedience. During the early 1970s, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo staged an exploration into the study of prisoners and prison life. Obedience is a form of social influence that involves acting on the orders of an authority figure. It often involves actions a person would not have taken unless they were directed to do so by someone of authority or influence. However, it’s not always easy to obtain good descriptive norm information, which means we sometimes rely on a flawed notion of the norm when deciding how we should behave. A good example of how misperceived norms can lead to problems is found in research on binge drinking among college students.
Psychology
According to the distribution of P3 (Jones et al., 2012), electrode points C3, CZ, C4, CP3, CPZ, CP4, P3, PZ, P4 were chosen for statistical analysis. Relatively positive and relatively negative reviews were regarded as relatively consistent reviews. Similarly, absolutely positive and absolutely negative reviews were regarded as absolutely consistent reviews. As we mentioned above, obedience and conformity are different from each other though they have something in common (independance and submission).
- Other variables that relate to leadership effectiveness include verbal skills, creativity, self-confidence, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (Cronshaw & Lord, 1987; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Yukl, 2002).
- However, Milgram found that two-thirds of the
teachers did administer even the highest level of shock, despite believing that
the learner was suffering great pain and distress. - On the other hand, the social situation can create powerful, and potentially deadly, social influence.
- In 2009, researchers partially replicated Milgram’s study, but with a top shock of 150 volts.
- The participants were male college students who were asked to engage in a seemingly simple task.
Certainly, there are important features of that time and place that cannot be recreated in a laboratory, such as a pervasive climate of prejudice and dehumanization. Some people have argued that today we are more aware of the dangers of blind obedience than we were when the research was conducted back in the 1960s. However, findings from partial and modified replications of Milgram’s procedures conducted in recent years suggest that people respond to the situation today much like they obedience refers to did a half a century ago (Burger, 2009). For instance, although Winston Churchill is now regarded as having been one of the world’s greatest political leaders ever, he was not a particularly popular figure in Great Britain prior to World War II. However, against the backdrop of the threat posed by Nazi Germany, his defiant and stubborn nature provided just the inspiration many sought. This is a classic example of how a situation can influence the perceptions of a leader’s skill.
Types of Power
Although other fields have studied obedience, social psychology has been primarily responsible for the advancement of research on obedience. He set up a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford University psychology department and assigned his participants to play the roles of either https://accounting-services.net/journal-entry-definition-accountingtools/ prisoners or guards, with Zimbardo himself acting as the prison warden. Despite the problems with Milgram’s original study, some researchers have been able to replicate his findings. In 2009, researchers partially replicated Milgram’s study, but with a top shock of 150 volts.
He soon discovered, however, that many people are surprisingly obedient to authority. During the 1950s, a psychologist Stanley Milgram became intrigued with the conformity experiments performed by Solomon Asch. Asch’s work had demonstrated that people could easily be swayed to conform to group pressure, but Milgram wanted to see just how far people would be willing to go. The process during which the leadership of organized crime is passed from one ethnic group to another. Beyond this automatic tendency to imitate others, psychologists have identified two primary reasons for conformity. When normative influence is operating, people go along with the crowd because they are concerned about what others think of them.
Milgram’s Obedience Experiments
Although the workers (who were actually preprogrammed) performed equally well in both conditions, the participants who were given more power took advantage of it by more frequently contacting the workers and more frequently threatening them. The students in this condition relied almost exclusively on coercive power rather than attempting to use their legitimate power to develop positive relations with the subordinates. Although it did not increase the workers’ performance, having the extra power had a negative effect on the power-holders’ images of the workers. At the end of the study, the supervisors who had been given extra power rated the workers more negatively, were less interested in meeting them, and felt that the only reason the workers did well was to obtain the rewards. Stimulus materials were the same in both segments, all including two blocks.
Compared with individualistic cultures, people who live in collectivist cultures place a higher value on the goals of the group than on individual preferences. They also are more motivated to maintain harmony in their interpersonal relations. A young child who mimics the opinions or behaviors of an older sibling or a famous sportsperson, or a religious person who follows the advice of a respected religious leader, is influenced by referent power. Referent power generally produces private acceptance rather than public compliance (Kelman, 1961). The influence brought on by referent power may occur in a passive sense because the person being emulated does not necessarily attempt to influence others, and the person who is being influenced may not even realize that the influence is occurring.