Obbedience- situational explanations

Question 1

Agentic State

Answer 1

• A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure
• This frees us from our conscience and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure
• They experience high anxiety when they realise what they are doing is wrong but feel powerless to disobey

Question 2

Autonomous state

Answer 2

• free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions
• shift from autonomy to agency is known as the agentic shift- occurs when you perceive someone else as the authority figure

Question 3

Binding Factors

Answer 3

• 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
• Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses such as shifting the responsibility onto the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victims

Question 4

Leitimacy of Authority

Answer 4

• an explanation of obedience that suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
• this authority is justified (lehitimate) by the individuals position of power within a social hierarchy e.g. police to help society run smoothly
• one of the consequences of legitimacy of authority is that some people are granted the power to punish others
• we learn acceptance of authority from childhood, from parents initially then teachers and adults generally

Question 5

Destructive Authority

Answer 5

• problems arise when legitimate authority figures become destructive e.g. Hitler
• destructive authority was obvious in Milgram’s study when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their conscience

Question 6

Research Suppprt for agentic state

strength

Answer 6

• In Milgram’s studies many of the participants asked question regarding who was responsible for the shocks harming the learner
• when the experimenter said he was responsible the participants often went through with the procedure quickly with no further objections
• shows that once participants perceived they were no longer responsible for their own actions they acted more easily as the experimenters agent

Question 7

limited explanation for agentic shift

limitation

Answer 7

• does not explain many research findings about obedience
• e.g. Rank and Jacobson- found that 16/18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer excessive drug doses to a patient- doctor was an obvious authority figure
• but almost all the nurses remained autonomous like Milgrams participants
• agentic shift can only account for some of obedience

Question 8

legitimacy of authority explains cultural differences

strength

Answer 8

• many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient to authority
• some research found that only 16% of female australian participants went up to 450V in a Milgram style study
• 85% of german females went up to 450V
• this shows that in some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and reflects the ways in which different societies are structured

Question 9

legitimacy of authority cannot explain all (dis)obedience

limitation

Answer 9

• legitimacy cannot explain all instances of disobedience in a hierarchy where the legitimacy of authority is clear and accepted
• Nurses in Rank and Jacobsons study- most of them were disobedient despite working in a rigidly hierarchal authority structure
• also, a significant minority of Milgram’s participants disobeyed despite the scientific authority of the experimenter
• suggests that some poeple may just be more or less obedient than others due to personality