Socio-cognitive characteristics of personality and behavior patterns of students with different expressiveness of obedience to authority

Abstract

The problem of destructive obedience of person to a legitimate authority takes one of the leading places in social psychology. The path-breaker in the field of researches of obedience to authority – S. Milgram specified that when a person obeys, he falls into the special state of mind called agent. It appears that by definition of this state, Milgram has created a basis for the research of socio-cognitive characteristics of personality with different expressiveness of obedience. Taking in consideration the above, we have conducted a research where the main goal is revealing with different expressiveness of obedience to authority in the level of subjective control, attitudes of the motivational and need sphere and evaluating their interpersonal relations in connection with the actualization of their obedient behavior under the simulated conditions of interpersonal interaction. The total sample of the research is 72 people from different departments of Saratov State University. Of these, 30 people took part in the experiment. The research has revealed distinctions in socio-cognitive characteristics and behavior of personality with different level of expressiveness of obedience to authority that appear within interpersonal interaction. Particularly, students with low degree of expressiveness of obedience have a high level of internality and are more careful in the choice of people with whom they build friendly relations. They are armed with well-formed social installations on result, work, freedom and power. On the contrary, students with high level of expressiveness of obedience have lower level of internality and are less careful in building of friendship. Typically, they are armed with installations on process and altruism. Also, experiment has shown that in a situation of obedience to the authority, knowledge of willful deceit of authority that makes the purpose of activity of person unclear, in spite of strictly certain task and bans of the authority, is not able to release the person from psychological influence of obedience situation.