dispositional factors for obedience

Question 1

agentic state

Answer 1

• a mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figuring

Question 2

autonomous state

Answer 2

• when an individual is freely and consciously in control of their actions and thus takes responsibility for them

Question 3

milgrams theory on agentic state

Answer 3

• taught from a young age that obedience is necessary for an orderly society
• requires individuals to give up free-will
• in situations where an individual obeys an authority figure , they hand over the responsibilty of their actions to the person giving orders
• dont consider themselves responsible

Question 4

legitimacy of authority

Answer 4

• an explanation for obediance which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authoirty over us
• authority is justified by the individuals position within social hierarchy
  (more likely to obey in yale+ lab coat)

Question 5

LIMITATION:
the agentic state and real-life obedience: milgrams claim that people shift back and forth between an autonomous state and an agentic state fails to explain the very gradual and irreversible tranition that lifton found in his study of german doctors working at Auschwitz

Answer 5

lifton found that these doctors had changed gradually and irreversibly from ordinary medical professionals, concerned only with welfare of their patients, into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiements on the helpless prisoners
- staub suggests that rather than agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many holocaust perpatrators, it is the experience of carrying out acts of evil over a long time that changes the way in which individuals think and behave

Question 6

LIMITATION:
although there are many positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority, it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as a basis for justifying harming others

Answer 6

if people authorise another person to make judgments for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct
- as a result, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, peeople are alarmingly willing to do so
- as a result people may readily engage in unquestioning obedience to authoirty,no matter how distructive and immoral the actions are

Question 7

strength

Answer 7

milgrams own study supports the agentic state, “who is responsible when mr wallace is harmed?”
- when the experimenter replied with “i am responsible”, participants didn’t hesitate to to object

Question 8

authoritarian personality

Answer 8

• a type of personality that adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority
• such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors
• fuelled by their inflexible outlook on the world, everything is either right or wrong and they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty
• adorno believed this forms from childhood as a result of harsh parenting (strict discipline)
• conditional love (i will love you if..)
• these experiences create resent and hostility in a child and can’t express these feelings directly due to fair as punishment

Question 9

Adorno’s research

Answer 9

• studied more than 2000 middle class, white americans and their unconscious attitudes to other ethnic groups
• researchers developed several measurement scales inlucding the F-scale (measures different components made up of the authoritarian personailty)

Question 10

Adorno’s findings

Answer 10

• people who scored high on the F-scale, identified with strong people and generally contemptuous of the weak
• they were very conscious of status and showed extreme respect
• found that those with this personality had a certain cognitive style and had fixed sterotypes about other groups
• positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 11

LIMITATION: the social context is more important

Answer 11

• although milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and dis,he did not believe the evidence was particularly strong
• milgram showed that variations in the social context were the primary cause of differences in participants levels of obedience, not variation in personality
• he believed that the specific situation participants found themselves in caused them to obey or resist regardless of their personailites
• relying on an explanation of obedience based pureply on authortitarianims lacks the flexibility to account for these variations

Question 12

LIMITATION: education may determine authoritarianism and obedience

Answer 12

• middendrop and meloen found that less-educated people are consistently more authoritain than well educated people
• milgram found the same
• suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responible for both
• as a result any causal relationship may be more illusory than rea;