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
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 clain result of a single factor - acting as the agent of a 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.
