Bocchiaro

Question 1

What is the background of the study?

Answer 1

Milgram found that people have strong inclinations to obey legitimate authority. However, there is little understanding about the nature of disobedience to unjust authority.

Question 2

What are the aims of the study?

Answer 2

Bocchiaro was interested in understanding the personal (individual) as well as the social (situational) nature of variations in (dis)obedience led them to collect a variety of personality and values information from their participants.

Question 3

What was the research method?

Answer 3

Considered a Lab experiment but is best viewed as a scenario study.

Question 4

Where was the study held?

Answer 4

Amsterdam- VU University- in a laboratory

Question 5

What was the IV?

Answer 5

There was no IV

Question 6

What was the DV?

Answer 6

• whether the participant obeyed, disobeyed or blowed the whistle
• The scores on 2 personality inventories

Question 7

What was the 2 personality inventories?

Answer 7

• HEXACI-PI-R

* Decomposed games

Question 8

What was the sample?

Answer 8

Originally 160 participant but 11 of them were removed from the initial sample because of their suspiciousness about the nature of the study.

Question 9

What was the reward the participants were given so they would take part?

Answer 9

Course credit or €7

Question 10

Key findings

Question 11

Possible conclusions

Answer 11

• People tend to obey authority figures, even if the authority is unjust.
• With regard to faith, there appears to be a trend suggesting that whistle blowers have more faith than either obedient or disobedient individuals.

Question 12

Methodological issues- Research method

Question 13

Methodological issues- validity

Answer 13

+ Personality test and social orientation test are both well established measures that provide valid measures.

+ Provides an ethical way to measure disobedience.

• Lacks ecological validity and mundane realism. Writing a statement to friends to take part in an unethical study is not a everyday task.

Question 14

Methodological issue- Reliability

Answer 14

+ High reliability as there’s a standardised procedure. Means we can replicate and check for consistency.

Question 15

Methodological issue- Sampling Bias

Answer 15

+ This study included women whilst Milgrams didn’t. More representative.

• All were university students (young) and doesn’t represent target population. As they’re students, they are more proactive which means they’re more likely to whistle blow.

Question 16

Methodological issue- Ethnocentrism

Answer 16

• Study conducted in Holland. Then used to explain (dis)obedience in other cultures around the world.