Obedience: Social-psychological Factors Flashcards
What are social-psychological factors
They concern the influences of others on an individual’s behaviour
What are the two theories on social-psychological factors
Agentic state and legitimacy theory
What is agentic state
When someone believes they are acting on behalf of the authority figure higher up in the social hierarchy who gave them the order so have no personal responsibility for their actions
What is autonomous state
A state of independence when a person has free will to choose how they behave and take full responsibility for their actions
What is agentic shift
When people are in the presence of a perceived authority figure they make a change from autonomous to agentic state
What are binding factors
Aspects of the situation which bind us to the task and allow us to block out the moral strain we are experiencing eg denying responsibility/fear of consequences of not obeying
What is the legitimacy of authority theory
Suggests we are more likely to obey people we perceive to have authority over us, this authority is justified by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy
What is legitimacy of the system
Extent to which the ‘body’ is a legitimate source of authority eg government/school
What is legitimacy of authority within the system
The power individuals hold to give orders because of their position in the system, linked to status and hierarchy
What is legitimacy of demands given
Extent to which the order is perceived to be a legitimate area for the authority figure (eg teacher telling you to complete your hw vs telling you to wash their car)
What is destructive authority
When a leader uses their legitimate authority to order people lower down in the social hierarchy to behave in cruel and evil ways
What is legitimate authority
People who have positions of authority because they have been entrusted by society with certain powers
Examples of binding factors in Milgram’s experiment
Told to shock confederate by experimenter and told they must continue and that experimenter would take full responsibility for their actuons
Expand on strength that legitimacy of authority explanation has research support
-Blass and Schmitt showed a video of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner, students blamed the experimenter rather than the participant arguing he had responsibility due to his authority
-argued he was responsible due to legitimate authority (top of hierarchy) and expert authority (was scientist)
-supports theory as further study found similar results
Expand on limitation that agentic state is a limited explanation
-agentic shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings eg does not explain why some of the ppts did not obey in Milgram’s study
-does not explain hoflings findings as the agentic shift predicts that as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor they should have shown high levels of anxiety as they understood their role in the destructive process however they did not
-agentic shift cannot account for all situations of obedience
