Obedience: social - psychological factors

Question 1

what are the 2 social-psychological factors?

Answer 1

agentic state and legitimacy of authority

Question 2

what is the agentic state?

Answer 2

a mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our actions as we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure, i.e. as their agent.
This frees us from the demand of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure.

Question 3

what sparked Milgram’s initial interest in obedience?

Answer 3

the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for war crimes.

Eichmann had been in charge of the Nazi death camps and his defence was that he was only following orders.

Question 4

what impact did Eichmann’s trial have on Milgram?

Answer 4

the trial of Eichmann led to Milgram proposing that obedience to a destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsibility for their actions. Instead, the believe themselves to be acting for someone else, i.e. that they are an agent.

Question 5

what’s an agent?

Answer 5

an agent is someone who works for or in the place of another.

Question 6

what emotions do agents feel?

Answer 6

agents are not unfeeling puppets - they experience high anxiety and a moral strain when they realise that what they are doing is wrong but they feel powerless to disobey.

Question 7

what is the autonomous state?

Answer 7

a mental state where the individual is free to behave independently and according to their own principles, and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their actions.

Question 8

what is an agentic shift?

Answer 8

an agentic shift is the switch from the autonomous state to the agentic state.

Question 9

According to Milgram (1974), when does the agentic shift occur?

Answer 9

The agentic shift occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority. This other person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy.

Question 10

what are binding factors?

Answer 10

binding factors are aspects of the situation that allow a person to ignore or minimise the damaging effects of their behaviour and reduce the moral strain that they are feeling.

Question 11

why do people stay in the agentic state even when they don’t want to?

Answer 11

they stay in the agentic state because of binding factors.

Question 12

what are some examples of the different strategies that an individual uses to help them reduce the moral strain?

Answer 12

shifting the responsibility to the victim

denying the damage that they were doing to the victim.

Question 13

why is the authority of those in power legitimate?

Answer 13

because it is accepted by the majority of society.

Question 14

what do most of us accept when it comes to authority?

Answer 14

most of us accept that authority figures have to be allowed to exercise social power over others as this allows our society to function smoothly.

Question 15

what is a consequence of legitimacy of authority?

Answer 15

some people are granted the power to punish others. Most of us accept that the police and courts have the power to publish wrongdoers. So we are willing to give up some of our independence and to hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately.

Question 16

who do we learn legitimacy of authority from?

Answer 16

our parents in childhood, teachers and other adults.

Question 17

when do problems arise with regards to legitimate authority?

Answer 17

problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive. History has shown that charismatic and powerful leaders can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are callous, cruel, stupid and dangerous.

Question 18

where is destructive authority shown in Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 18

destructive authority is shown when the experimenter used prods to order ppts to behave in ways that went against their consciences.

Question 19

what is an example of real-life application for Milgram’s study.

Answer 19

the massacre at My Lai in 1968 - During the Vietnam war, as many as 504 unarmed civilians were killed by American soldiers. Soldiers blew up buildings, burnt the village and killed all animals.

Only soldier faced charges and was found guilty, Lt William Calley. His defence was the same as Adolf Eichmann’s, he was only following orders.

Question 20

what is a strength of social-psychological factors with regards to research support?

Answer 20

Blass and Schmitt (2001) - showed students a vid of Milgram’s study. They felt that the experimenter was responsible for the harm against the learner, Mr. Wallace, as the experimenter had both legitimate authority and expert authority.

In other words, the students recognised that the experimenter had legitimate authority, therefore the ppts would have been in the agentic state.

Question 21

what is a limitation of the agentic shift?

Answer 21

it’s a limited explanation - doesn’t explain some of the research findings.

For example, it doesn’t explain why some of the ppts didn’t obey - humans are social animals and involved in social hierarchies therefore should have obeyed.

Additionally, doesn’t explain Hofling et al’s findings. The agentic shift explanations suggests that as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown similar levels of anxiety as Milgram’s ppts, as they understood their role in a destructive process. But they did not.

These examples suggest that at best, the agentic shift can only account for some explanations of obedience

Question 22

cultural difference research studies.

What did Kilham and Mann (1974) find?

What did Mantell (1971) find?

Answer 22

Kilham and Mann replicated the study in Australia and found that only 16% of ppts reached the highest shock level.

Mantell found that 85% of German ppts reached the highest voltage levels.

Question 23

what do the different cultural replications suggest?

Answer 23

they show that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate. This reflects the ways in which societies are structured and how children perceive authority figures. Findings from cross-cultural research therefore increase the validity of the explanation.