Explanations For Obedience: Agentic State And Legitimacy Of Authority Flashcards
What is an agent?
Someone who acts for or in place of another.
What is agentic state?
Some may attribute responsibility for their actions to someone else, particularly a figure of authority. Sees themselves as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes.
Who proposed agentic state?
Milgram - 1974
What is the process of agentic state called?
Agentic shift
What is agentic shift?
Agentic shift involves moving from an autonomous state, where a person ‘sees himself or herself as responsible for their own actions’ into an agentic state.
What is an autonomous state?
A person is free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions.
What did Milgram suggest for the explanation behind agentic shift?
Occurs when a person perceived someone else as an authority figure. This is because the authority figure has more power as they have a higher position in a social hierarchy.
Binding factors
Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the ‘moral strain’ they are feeling such as blaming the victim or denying damages.
What is a buffer?
A situation that protects people from facing the consequences of their action.
For example, when the teacher and learner were in the same room 65% obeyed to 450V. Dropped to 40% when in proximity.
Legitimate Authority
For us to obey a person or situation we must believe that it is genuine and it has real power over us.
For example, when Milgram’s experiments took place in a run down building obedience dropped to 47.5%.
Consequences of legitimacy of authority
Some people are granted the power to punish others. We are willing to give up some of our independent and hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately. We learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood, from parents/adults/teachers.
Destructive authority
Charismatic authority can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes.
Ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel and dangerous. Destructive authority was obvious in Milgram’s study, when the Experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.
Limitation of Agentic State
P - Doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience which is a limited explanation.
E - For example, it does not explain the findings of Rank & Jacobson’s study. They found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient. The doctor was an obvious authority figure. But almost all the nurses remained autonomous, as did many of Milgram’s participants.
Strength of Agentic State
P - Research support
E - Most of Milgram’s participants resisted giving the shocks at some point, and often asked the Experimenter questions about the procedure. One of these was who is response if the learner is harmed, the response given was that the experimenter was responsible. The participants often then went through the procedure quickly. This shows that once participants perceived they were no longer responsible for their own behaviour.
Strength of Legitimacy of authority
P - Further research support.
E - Nuremberg trials further provide real world support as “I was just taking orders” was frequently cited by Nazi guards in relation to the atrocities committed in concentration camps. Extensive support, both in research and real-life situations.
