Explainations for obedience

Question 1

Situational explaination:

Answer 1

Milgrams research supports Eichmanss excuse that he was “just following orders”

Question 2

Agentic state characteristics:

Answer 2

• Moral strain
• Autonomous state is the opposite
• Agentic shift is the change from autonomous to agentic

Question 3

What is are the factors that causes someone to stay in Agentic state?

Answer 3

Binding factors:
- Shifting responsibility to the victim
- Denial of damage

Question 4

When is someones authority legitimate

Answer 4

When it is socially agreed that these people should have power

Question 5

How do we learn to accept authority

Answer 5

Through socialisation from parents then from wider society

Question 6

What is the name for using legitimacy of authority in a dangerous way

Answer 6

Destructive authority
Example: Hitler, Experimenter from Milgrams research

Question 7

Evaluate Milgrams situational explainations for authority

Answer 7

+ Can explain real-life war crimes: My Lai massacre may have been due to legitimacy of authority or agentic state
T: Explainatory power

• The situational explainations cannot account for all cases of obedience: They cannot explain disobedience, we do not always follow authority. 35% of students did not shock to 450V. Agentic state cannot explain why Holflings nurses did not feel moral strain
• Obedience alibi: Both give someone to blame their behaviour on, German reserve police shot Polish civilians without direct order.
  T: Unethical explainations

Question 8

What is the psychodynamic theory?

Answer 8

A person’s personality traits and
attitudes as an adult stemmed from childhood.

When a child had overly harsh and disciplinarian parents, the child would
displace their anger with their parents onto seemingly ‘inferior’ others, through the process of
scapegoating.

Question 9

Evaluate the authoritarian personality

Answer 9

Serious methodological issues associated with the F-scale: susceptible to acquiscence bias
T: Findings lack validity

The Authoritarian Personality may not be able to explain all cases of obedience across
the whole political spectrum:
Meastures only fascism, but left-wing authoritarianism exists as well (Bolshevism).
CC: Majority of authoritarianists would be right-wing.

Cannot explain many
real-life examples of mass obedience: unlikely that the whole German
population during Nazi occupation had an Authoritarian Personality
T: Limited explaination