Obedience - agency theory (A01- description)

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

Examines human behaviour in the context of our relationships with others

Question 2

What is meant by obedience?

Answer 2

compliance to the real or imagined demands of an authority figure

it is assumed that without such an order the person would not have acted this way.

The person giving the order has a higher status than the person receiving the order.

Question 3

Autonomous state?

Answer 3

A mindset where we behave independently, make our own decisions about how to behave and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions

Question 4

Agentic state?

Answer 4

A mindset that allows us to carry out orders from an authority figure, even if they conflict with our personal sense of right and wrong.

We absolve ourselves of responsibility, believing that as we are acting on someone else’s behalf, blame from any negative consequences ultimately lies with them

Question 5

Milgram quote about obedience

Answer 5

‘We are born with a potential for obedience, which then interacts with the influence of society to create the obedient man’

Question 6

How might someone act in the autonomous state?

Answer 6

Our behaviour is ‘self-directed’, we take greater responsibility for the consequences of our actions and are more likely to exercise our personal understanding of right and wrong

Question 7

When might someone act in an autonomous state?

Answer 7

When we’re on our own or with people we perceive to be below us in the social hierarchy

Question 8

When we change from our normal autonomous state to the agentic state its called the…

Answer 8

Agentic shift

Question 9

What may we do in an agentic state?

Answer 9

Acts of destructive obedience

Question 10

Yielding to demands?

Answer 10

Obedience

Question 11

Rejecting demands?

Answer 11

Dissent

Question 12

Example of destructive obedience?

Answer 12

Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in 1990s - 2.7 million killed

Question 13

How are we innately prepared to be obedient?

Answer 13

Exposure to authority figures through the process of socialization - use rewards and punishments

Question 14

Name the two different states

Answer 14

Autonomy and agency

Question 15

When does moral strain occur?

Answer 15

When people are asked to do something they would not choose to do themselves - unmoral. This causes anxiety as they contemplate dissent

Question 16

What is moral strain?

Answer 16

A state of mental discomfort or experienced in the agentic state when a person’s actions conflict with their personal morals

Question 17

Why does an agentic state relieve moral strain?

Answer 17

The individual displaces moral responsibility of the situation onto the authority figure, thereby absolving them of the consequence of their actions to not jeopardize the status quo.

Question 18

What is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 18

two conflicting ideas that lead to a state of mental turmoil that creates moral strain

Question 19

What ensures that the individual remains in the agentic state?

Answer 19

Powerful binding factors, and ensures that the individual does nothing to jeopardize the status quo