A-Level Psychology: Obedience and Resistance

Obedience is the heart of the social influence topic, and exam questions move fast from describing Milgram to explaining, evaluating and applying. This quiz covers the full chain: baseline findings, situational variables, theoretical explanations, dispositional accounts, resistance, and minority influence.

The Milgram questions test the analytically useful facts: why the baseline study produced such high obedience (perceived authority, the prestige of the setting), and which variations reduced it — the shift to a run-down office, orders given by telephone — with each variation tied to the concept it demonstrates. The uniform question makes the visual-symbol-of-authority point explicitly.

The theory questions cover both explanations the specification names: the agentic state, defined precisely as seeing oneself as the instrument of another's wishes with responsibility displaced upward, and legitimacy of authority as the social justification for obeying. The dispositional route gets its own question through Adorno's authoritarian personality — submissiveness to authority paired with hostility to outgroups.

Resistance questions cover social support (the ally who breaks unanimity) and locus of control, tested through the internal-external distinction. Minority influence completes the topic: Moscovici's consistency, commitment and flexibility, and the snowball effect by which a minority position becomes the majority view — the mechanism of social change the essay questions ask about.

Every explanation names the concept doing the work, building the terminology-dense answers A-level mark schemes reward. Together with the Conformity quiz, this completes compulsory social influence coverage.

• Explain Milgram's baseline findings and the effect of each situational variable
• Define the agentic state and legitimacy of authority precisely
• Describe the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation
• Analyse resistance through social support and locus of control
• Apply Moscovici's minority-influence conditions and the snowball effect to social change

Covers the compulsory Social Influence content of A-level Psychology: Milgram's obedience research and situational variables, agentic state and legitimacy of authority, the authoritarian personality, resistance to social influence, and minority influence in social change.