Explanations for obedience-Social pyschological factors Flashcards
What did Milgram propose?
Agency theory which said odeience to authority occurs as people do not take responsibilty and instead believe they are acting for someone else. This means they are an agent acting for someone else.
What is agentic shift?
Normally people are in an autonomous state where they are free to behave by themselves and take responsibility for their actions but shifting from autonomy to agency is an agentic shift. This happens when there is an authority figure and they are higher up in the social hierarchy.
Why do individuals remain in the agentic state even when they sometimes don’t want to?
Binding factors in the situation causes people to ignore or reduce the moral strain they are feeling. For example, using gradual commitment makes people more likely to continue like in Milgrams study.
What are the limitations of agency theory?
It can only be used to explain some situations as it doesn’t explain why some participants didn’t obey and doesn’t explain the findings in Hofling et al’s study as nurses didn’t feel anxious. Also some military behaviour doesn’t support agency theory as they were acting autonomously and still chose to shoot, as shown by Mandel.
What is legitimacy of authority?
Authority figures need to have a legitimate system, hierarchy in the system and have legitimate orders for orders to be followed.
What supports legitimacy of authority?
Blass and Schmitt showed Milgrams study to students who said that the experimenter was responsible for harm and recognised legitimacy of authority was the cause of obedience. Also, his experiment was repeated in Australia and Germany and these had very different results which shows how different cultures percieve authority. Also Kelman and Hamilton showed how a massacre could be explained by legitimacy of authority and so it links to real life events.
What is a limitation of legitimacy of authority?
It can be used destructively, as shown in history as so many people have given orders such as Hitler and people have carried them out.
