Explanations for Obedience

Question 1

What are the two explanations for obedience?

Answer 1

• The legitimacy of authority.

- The agentic state.

Question 2

What is the ‘legitimacy of authority’ explanation?

Answer 2

This suggests that we are more likely to obey people when an individual has justified (legitimate) authority due to their position of power within a social hierarchy.
Alternatively, we obey because the individual may have the power to punish us.

Question 3

What are the three evaluation points for the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 3

+ Milgram’s variations (location).
+ Bickman (1974 - uniform).
- Many participants still obey when the figure lacks legitimate authority.

Question 4

What is the agentic state?

Answer 4

This is a mental state where you are more likely to obey an order because you see yourself as having no personal responsibility for your actions, as you are acting on behalf of an authority figure (their agent).

Question 5

What is the agentic state often referred to as?

Answer 5

The agentic shift.

Question 6

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 6

The mental state where we see ourselves as responsible for our actions.

Question 7

What happens in the agentic shift?

Answer 7

We ‘shift’ from seeing ourselves as responsible (autonomous state) to see ourselves as an agent carrying out the wishes of another individual (agentic state).

Question 8

What are the three evaluation points for the agentic state?

Answer 8

+ Milgram’s obedience research (1963).

• Fails to explain individual differences.
• Real-life cases cannot be explained.