obedience situational explanations Flashcards
1
Q
what is an agent
A
- someone who acts in the place of another
- puppet
- experience high anxiety when they realise what they are doing is wrong
- feel powerless to disobey
2
Q
what is the autonomous state
A
- free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own action
3
Q
what is the agentic shift
A
- shift from autonomy to agency
- occurs when a person perceives someone else who has a higher postion in the social hierachy as an authority figure
4
Q
what are binding factors
A
- aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behavoiur
- reduces the moral strain they are feeling
- shift the responsibility to the victim
-deny the damage they are doing
5
Q
why are authority figures needed
A
- authority figures are allowed to exercise socal power over others because this allows society to function smoothly
- consequence is that some people are granted the power to punish others
6
Q
strength of agentic state
A
- research support
- milgrims study
- participants resisted giving shocks and asked the experimenter about the procedure
- ‘who is responsible if the participant is harmed’
- went through procedure when experimenter claimed the blame
7
Q
limitation of agentic state
A
- limited explanation
- agentic shift does not explain research findings about obedience
- study found that 16 out of 18 nurses disobey orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient
- nurses remained autonomous
8
Q
strength of legitimacy of authority
A
- explains cultural differences
- countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient
- only 16% of australian women went to 450 volts
- 85% of germans went to 450 volts
9
Q
limitations of legitimacy of authority
A
- cannot explain all disobedience
- some nurses were disobedent despite the clear hiearchy sturcture
- some of milgrams were disobedient even when the reacher claimed responsibilty for any harm
