obedience: situational explanations ao3 Flashcards
Research support for agentic state
P: Research support for the agentic state came from Milgram’s own studies.
E: At some point during Milgram’s experiment participants generally stopped giving shocks and asked the experimenter about the procedure. E.g. Who is responsible is Mr Wallace is harmed.
• After being told by experimenter that he is responsible not the teacher, they completed the procedure without objection.
E: therefore once ppts perceived they weren’t responsible for the harm they were causing they acted more easily as expirimenters agent they were more willing to avoid responsibility for their actions
L : thus supporting the agentic state as if provides evidence for the fact that where avoidance for personal responsibility is possible a person can continue obey an authority figure even if destructive
counter point to research support (milgram)
P; milgrams research has been critisced due to its multiple methodological flaws
E: for example the task of giving ppts an electric shock lacks mundane realsim, it doesnt reflect situations where obedience in the real world is at play. also the study lacks ecological validity - the university was not the norm for ppts.
E: people do obey but its in places of familarity eg work or school. orne and holland stated that the task was so unusal that ppts realised they werent actually shocking anyone and acted according to demand characteristcs trying to guess the aims of the experiemtn and act accordingly.
also his og sample only consisted of men, thus his findings regarding leg of auth and agentic state are not generalisable to women.
L: thus all of these methodloical issues limit the generalisability of findings of both the real world and women limiting the usefulness of the study
Weakness - limitated explanation of agentic state
P: A limitation of the agentic state is that it is not supported by real world events.
E: For example Mandel (1998) described how members of Gemian Reserve Police Battallion 101 murdered civilians without being directly ordered to. They were given a choice so acted autonomously.
E: This explanation doesn’t provide a reason as to why people autonomously obey and do inhumane things.
It is possible that other reasons, such as hatred, prejudice, racism and greed also played a role in their actions.
L: This suggests that Milgram’s explanation of the agentic state is oversimplified, as it claims beh is a result of a single factor - acting as the agent on behalf of destructive authority.
Strength of legitimacy of authority- research support
P: Tarnow (2000) provided support for the power of legitimate authority through a study of aviation accidents, where flight crew actions were a significant factor.
E: Tarnow found excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise.
• Eg. one second officer claimed that, although he noticed the caption taking a particularly risky approach, he said nothing as he assumed the captain must know what he’s doing.
• Such events and recordings offer support for the impact of the presence of a legitimate authority figure and overall increase the credibility of the theory.
