Every one of us is beautifully unique. Genetics make sure that no two of us are ever, or will ever be, entirely the same; we all have distinct individualities that provide us with a special place in the giant jigsaw of our planet. How then is it possible that so many of us experience the same prejudices and grow up with an inherent understanding of when obedience is necessary?
- We will first aim to understand the definition of developmental psychology.
- Next, we will explore the situational factors affecting obedience.
- We will then discuss the factors affecting prejudice.
- Next, we will look at some theories of developmental psychology, with a specific look into obedience and prejudice.
- Finally, we will talk about the differences between prejudice and obedience.
Developmental Psychology Definition
Children change and develop rapidly, bounding through the stages of development till they reach adulthood. Naturally, psychologists were interested in studying these stages of development, with a particular focus on how children obey and experience/understand prejudice. From this came developmental psychology.
Developmental psychology is the study of humans and how they change over time.
From infancy to death, humans change in several ways, e.g., their attitudes, behaviour, brain functions, etc. This behaviour change can explain why some people develop prejudiced views or are highly obedient and how the levels of both of these change throughout their life. Let's try and understand some factors affecting these in more detail.
Situational Factors Affecting Obedience
Different factors affect how obedient we are and where this behaviour stems from. Our environment as we grow up can shape these attitudes and behaviours, so how our parents approach a problem and address the concerns can influence how children deal with issues in the future.
Parenting
One theory by Adorno et al. (1950)¹ is that personality traits developed in childhood affect a person's approach to prejudice. Children who had harsh parenting developed a love-hate relationship with their parent(s). The 'love' aspect of this relationship develops into respect for authority figures as one grows older, which results in obedience to authority figures. The 'hate' aspect originates from being repressed whilst growing up and is displaced onto minorities and weaker members of society as one grows older.
Fig. 1 - Harsh parenting can impact prejudice and obedience
Personality: Introverts vs Extroverts
Continuing from the idea of personality traits, a study by Miranda et al. (1981)² demonstrated that, in participants in Spain, there was no significant difference between obedience in extroverts and introverts. Most might expect an introverted personality style to be more obedient, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Gender
There are theories about what role gender plays in obedience and how obedience rates differ for each gender, if at all.
Gender Roles and Schema Theory
In society, different attitudes and behaviours are taught and learnt based on a person’s gender, and this is how gender roles are formed.
Males are stereotypically perceived as aggressive, assertive, and strong, while females are perceived to be compliant and obedient.
Gender can thus affect obedient behaviour, which can develop in multiple ways. Girls growing up will be expected to obey more and may be expected to mature faster than boys and boys may be freer to exert their control over their behaviours; while this wasn’t an inherent trait in either gender, it has been taught to both genders.
Gender Differences
Kilham and Mann (1974)³ conducted a study in Australia similar to Milgram’s study on obedience. They wanted to investigate obedience rates in males and females to see if there was a difference between the genders. They had an authority figure order a participant to administer shocks to a confederate. Only 16% of females obeyed and administered the maximum voltage, while 40% of the males obeyed and administered the shocks.
These results demonstrate a gender difference in levels of obedience, and it does not necessarily follow the narrative previously held about genders. However, the female participants were administrating shocks to a female confederate. At the same time, the authority figure was male, which may have led to the behaviour being driven by in-group favouritism, which was perhaps more powerful than obedience to authority.
Culture
We know that societies differ in their approaches to many different aspects of life (Western societies tend to be individualistic, prioritising competition, whereas Eastern societies tend to be collectivists, prioritising the group). This can then influence how they approach obedience and prejudice. However, some cross-cultural obedience research suggests it may not be that different across cultures.
Universality of Obedience
There have been studies worldwide, in different cultures, investigating Milgram’s paradigm using close replications of his study. Consider the power distance (the difference between equality in individuals in a society, and how the culture views these differences) established by Hofstede (2017)4 in India: A score of 77 was reported in power distance (high).
This finding suggests a general acceptance of hierarchal systems in India and a dependence on authority figures for guidance. This would insinuate that there is a high rate of obedience in Indian culture.
Cross-cultural Differences in Obedience
While many replications of Milgram’s study have found similar obedience rates, most of these studies have taken place in individualistic countries, e.g. Spain. Smith and Bond (1998)5 did a meta-analysis and found that people in individualistic cultures behaved more independently and did what they wanted compared to those in collectivist cultures. Collectivist cultures were significantly more obedient.
Individualistic cultures value independent success, whilst collectivist cultures value group decision-making and doing what is best for the community, including following orders from an authority figure.
Factors Affecting Prejudice Psychology
The main factor affecting prejudice is culture.
Culture
Guimond et al. (2013)6 investigated the effect multiculturalism and assimilation had on multiple countries, which increases its generalisability, compared to previous research, which had mostly investigated these effects in only one country. The study aimed to find what effect multiculturalism and assimilation had on a country and how this effect was different for each country based on their diversity policy.
Assimilation is how a minority group integrates into a culture socially, culturally, and politically.
The researchers tested inter-group attitudes and behaviours in low, medium, or high countries with the pro-diversity policy. They found that when diversity policy was high, anti-Muslim prejudice significantly decreased.
Researchers also found that prejudice could be accounted for by multiculturalism and assimilation norms:
Multiculturalism was seen as high in pro-diversity and was more positive about group interactions.
Assimilation was seen as low in pro-diversity and was linked to discriminatory attitudes.
Canada had the lowest prejudice, and Germany had the highest.
Fig. 2 - Multiculturalism and diversity can impact our likelihood of prejudiced beliefs
The results show that countries with multicultural norms were less prejudiced. They also asked about society’s norms and how they’d be learned from the environment (e.g. media outlets). It suggests that prejudice and discrimination can be learned from one’s environment, especially whilst growing up. Therefore, it follows the narrative of developmental psychology since it’s the environments that cause us to develop such attitudes and behaviours.
Issues with early research in psychology consist of their lack of generalisability and ethnocentrism. Many studies were conducted in one country, on a particular set of participants (be that children or adults), and the results were then applied to the world. They were generalised to all people when in reality, a study on British children in the 1970s is not going to accurately reflect the behaviours of American/Spanish/Japanese children in the 1970s.
Theories of Developmental Psychology: Obedience and Prejudice
Each theory of developmental psychology has contributed to the understanding of human development in different ways, by focusing on different aspects of development. Let's briefly discuss two important theories below.
Bandura's Social Learning Theory
Have you ever wondered why children behave in a certain manner, and why no two children behave similarly?
Bowlby suggested that children behave by observing and imitating the behaviour that they witness.
Bandura illustrated this through the Bobo doll experiment. He studied 72 children in 3 groups and each group was exposed to different models of behaviour. The groups were as follows -
Group 1 watched an aggressive model.
Group 2 watched a non-aggressive model.
Group 3 watched no model (control group).
Once this exposure was complete and the children were put in a room to play with toys, Bandura noticed that those children that were exposed to the aggressive model played in a significantly more aggressive manner as compared to those who were exposed to the non-aggressive model or no model.
This shows that behaviour, is in fact, learned.
Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
Have you ever wondered if children understand morals? We know that it develops at some point in every individual, but what exactly is the process of this?
According to Kohlberg, there are three stages of moral development that children move through, and that progression from one stage to another happens in a fixed manner.
Each of Kohlberg's three stages was further split into two:
- Level 1 - Pre-conventional morality, with obedience and punishment orientation (stage 1) and individualism and exchange (stage 2).
- Level 2 - Conventional morality, with good interpersonal relationships (stage 3) and maintaining the social order (stage 4).
- Level 3 - Post-conventional morality, with social contract and individual rights (stage 5) and universal principles (stage 6).
Each of these stages discusses the level of moral development of a child.
A child in the pre-conventional stage has no level of morality - children only understand morality through rewards or punishment. If behaviour is good, it will be rewarded and vice versa.
A child in the conventional morality stage begins to understand societal rules, and what is accepted and what isn't.
Finally, a child in the post-conventional stage begins to understand what values they hold and their moral reasoning takes shape based on their individual choices and understanding of the world.
Differences in Obedience & Prejudice Psychology
We've discussed developmental psychology in obedience and prejudice, but what are they and how are they different? Let's take a look below.
Obedience is a form of social influence wherein an individual carries out behaviour at the request of someone else.
Prejudice is a preconceived notion about something or someone, and is not based on any actual experiences.
Taking these two definitions into account, we can see that both of these concepts are drastically different. But can one lead to the other? Let's look at an example.
While in a group, imagine if you assume that one person is the leader of the group. With this notion in your mind, if they tell you to do something, chances are that you will do it because of what you believe. Therefore, this prejudice can lead to obedience.
However, if someone tells you to change your thoughts about something, and you do - that is simply you being obedient. Since your thoughts are changing because of an experience, this cannot be considered prejudice.
However, this is something that hasn't been tested - so while we can assume the relationship between the two, there is no concrete evidence!
Developmental Psychology in Obedience/Prejudice - Key takeaways
- Developmental psychology is the study of humans and how they change over time.
- Situational factors that affect obedience are parenting, personality, gender and culture.
- The most important factor affecting prejudice is culture.
- Two prominent theories of developmental psychology that relate to obedience and prejudice are Bandura's Social Learning Theory and Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development.
- Obedience is a form of social influence wherein an individual carries out a behaviour on the request of someone else, whereas, prejudice is a preconceived notion about something or someone, and is not based on any actual experiences.
References
- Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row (pp. 228).
- Miranda, F. S., Caballero, R. B., Gomez, M. N., & Zamorano, M. A. (1981). Obediencia a la auroridad [Obedience to authority]. Psiquis, 2, 212–221.
- Kilham, W., & Mann, L. (1974). Level of destructive obedience as a function of transmitter and executant roles in the Milgram obedience paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29(5), 696–702.
- India - Hofstede Insights. (2017). Retrieved 13 October 2022, from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country/india/#:~:text=Power%20Distance%20is%20defined%20as,structure%20in%20society%20and%20organizations.
- Smith PB, Bond MH (1998) Social psychology across cultures, 2nd edn. London: Prentice Hall International (also 1999, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon)
- Guimond, S., Crisp, R. J., De Oliveira, P., Kamiejski, R., Kteily, N., Kuepper, B., Lalonde, R. N., Levin, S., Pratto, F., Tougas, F., Sidanius, J., & Zick, A. (2013). Diversity policy, social dominance, and intergroup relations: predicting prejudice in changing social and political contexts. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(6), 941–958. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032069
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