Explanations for obedience: agentic state

Question 1

What is meant by the agentic state?

Answer 1

A mental state where you are more likely to obey an order because you see yourself as having no personal responsibility for your own behaviour as you are acting on behalf of the authority figure.

Question 2

What is meant by the autonomous state?

Answer 2

When a person feels that they are responsible for their own actions and have control over their own behaviour.

Question 3

What is meant by the agentic shift?

Answer 3

When an individual starts to believe that they are no longer responsible for their actions and instead feel responsible to the authority. Individuals become concerned that they should ‘do the job right’

Question 4

What is a strength of the agentic state explanation for obedience?

Answer 4

P: supporting evidence from Milgram
E: Milgram conducted a variation of his original experiment where the researcher was placed in a different room to the real participant (teacher). Instead of giving orders face to face, the researcher gave orders to the real ppt over the phone. This resulted in a fall in obedience rates from 65% to 20.5%
E: without the presence of the authority figure, the ppts shifted to an autonomous state where they saw themselves as responsible for their actions.

Question 5

Limitation: alternative explanations for obedience

Answer 5

P: one problem is that there are other reasons why people obey
E/E: authoritarian personality, legitimacy of authority etc.
L: therefore agentic state is limited as an explanation for obedience as it cannot explain all obedience

Question 6

Limitation: criticisms of lab experiments (methodology used by Milgram)

Answer 6

P: the studies used to support the theory are often conducted in lab settings
E/E: demand characteristics, low ecological validity, lacks mundane realism
L: therefore reducing the accuracy (validity) of the findings and limiting how far we can generalise the results