Obedience: Situational explanations Flashcards
1
Q
What does the topic of Obedience: situational explanations?
A
- The idea of the Agentic state, Agentic shift and Autonomous state
2
Q
What is the Agentic state?
A
- We fail to take responsibility because we believe we are acting on behalf of authority figures (‘just following orders’)
3
Q
What is an Autonomous state?
A
- We feel free of other influences and so take personal responsibility for our actions
4
Q
What is the Agentic shift?
A
- We switch from autonomous to agentic because we perceive somebody else is an authority figure to be obeyed
- Binding factors maintain us in an agentic state - they allow us to minimise the damaging effects of our behaviour and reduce moral strain
5
Q
What research supports the Agentic State?
A
- Often the pps in Milgram’s experiment asked who was responsible if the learner was harmed and when the researcher assured them it was them who was responsible they continued
6
Q
What makes the idea of an Agentic State a limited explanation?
A
- does not explain the findings of Rank and Jacobson where 16/18 nurses disobeyed doctors order to give a patient an excessive drug dose. Almost all the nurses remained autonomous
7
Q
What is legitimacy of authority?
A
- Some people have certain authority because they have been entrusted by society with certain powers
8
Q
What an example of a power?
A
- The power to punish, so we obey authority out of fear of punishment, which we learn in childhood
9
Q
What is destructive obedience?
A
- We behave in cruel ways if the legitimate authority figure orders us to do something destructive
10
Q
How does Legitimacy of Authority explain cultural differences?
A
- Only 16% of Australian women went up to 450v in Milgrams study whereas, German pps went up to 450v 85 % of the time. Shows that in some cultures authority is more likely to be perceived as legitimate than others
