Obedience: Social-psychological factors

Question 1

Who proposed social-psychological explanations of obedience?

Answer 1

Milgram offered social-psychological explanations for the levels of obedience he found in his studies.

Question 2

What initially sparked Milgram’s interest in obedience?

Answer 2

Stanley Milgram’s initial interest in obedience was sparked by 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 obeying orders.

Question 3

How did the trial of Eichmann influence Milgram’s hypothesis?

Answer 3

The trial of Eichmann led Milgram to propose that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsibility. Instead, they believe they are acting for someone else.

Question 4

What is an ‘agent’?

Answer 4

An agent is someone who acts for or in place of another. Agents are not ‘unfeeling puppets’ as they are likely to experience high anxiety when they realise that what they are doing is wrong, but feel powerless to disobey.

Question 5

What is a ‘moral strain’?

Answer 5

Moral strain refers to the high anxiety an agent will experience when they realise that what they are doing is wrong, but feel powerless to disobey.

Question 6

Milgram’s social-psychological explanations of obedience are composed of two components. Name the ‘psychological’ explanation.

Answer 6

The agentic state acts as a psychological explanation of obedience.

Question 7

What is the agentic state?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

What is the opposite of being in an agentic state?

Answer 8

The opposite of being in an agentic state is being in an autonomous state.

Question 9

What is meant by the term ‘autonomy’?

Answer 9

‘Autonomy’ means to be independent or free. Therefore, a person in an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions.

Question 10

What is the agentic shift?

Answer 10

The shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is called the agentic shift.

Question 11

According to Milgram, when is the agentic shift likely to occur?

Answer 11

Milgram suggested that this shift occurs when a person perceives someone else as being a figure of authority. This other person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy. In most social groups when one person in in charge, others defer to this person and shift from autonomy to agency.

Question 12

According to Milgram, why do individuals remain in the agentic state?

Answer 12

Milgram had observed that many of his participants spoke as if they wanted to quit but seemed unable to do so. The answer to this is binding factors (aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the ‘moral strain’ they are feeling).

Question 13

Binding factors are thought to reduce one’s moral strain. Provide one example of a binding factor.

Answer 13

Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim (e.g. ‘he was foolish to volunteer). Alternatively, one might deny the damage they were doing to the victims.

Question 14

Milgram’s social-psychological explanations of obedience are composed of two components. Name the ‘social’ explanation.

Answer 14

Legitimacy of authority acts as a social explanation of obedience.

Question 15

How are societies structured?

Answer 15

Most societies are structured in a hierarchal way. This means that people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us. For example, parents, teachers and police officers all have some kind of authority over us at times.

Question 16

When is someone thought to possess legitimate authority?

Answer 16

Someone is thought to possess legitimate authority when their authority is agreed by society. For example, police officers have legitimate authority because most of us accept that they have to be allowed to exercise social power over others in order to allow society to function smoothly.

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 17

During what stage of life does one learn to accept legitimate authority?

Answer 17

We learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood.

Question 18

At what stage does legitimate authority become problematic?

Answer 18

Problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive.

Question 19

Give two examples of historic leaders who demonstrated destructive authority.

Answer 19

Hitler and Stalin used their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are callous, cruel and dangerous.

Question 20

When was destructive authority demonstrated in Milgram’s study?

Answer 20

Destructive authority was clearly shown in Milgram’s study when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.

Question 21

Evaluation point: ‘One limitation of the agentic shift is that it can only account for some situations of obedience’. Write a paragraph outlining this AO3 point.

Answer 21

One limitation of the agentic shift is that it can only account for some situations of obedience. For example, the agentic shift explanation fails to account for the findings found in Hofling et al’s study. Milgram’s theory predicts that, as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants. However, this was not the case. The failure of Milgram’s theory to be applied to a range of real-life contexts acts as a weakness, because it alludes to the idea that the agentic shift is a limited explanation of obedience, resulting in it having a limited level of influence within psychology today. In this light, Milgram’s proposal of social-psychological factors can be criticised for being environmentally reductionist. According to this evidence, perhaps it is insufficient to break human behaviour down into two simple explanations. As a result, a nomothetic law cannot be produced because the agentic shift theory cannot act as a holistic explanation of all cases of obedience. Milgram’s theory thus remains idiographic.

Question 22

Evaluation point: ‘One limitation of Milgram’s proposal of social-psychological factors derives from conflicting evidence’. Write a paragraph outlining this AO3 point.

Answer 22

One limitation of Milgram’s proposal of social-psychological factors derives from conflicting evidence. In 1983, Mandel described one incident involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101 where men obeyed the orders to shoot civilians in a small town in Poland. This was despite the fact they did not have direct orders to do so and were offered other duties if preferred. This therefore acts as a weakness of Milgram’s theory because it challenges his perspective that people only conform in order to obey legitimate authority. In this light, Milgram’s proposal of social-psychological factors can be challenged for being environmentally reductionist because he has failed to recognise the influence of alternative, personality factors over one’s behaviour (e.g. sadistic tendencies). For Milgram to achieve a more holistic explanation, perhaps he would need to adopt an interactionist approach by considering biological factors (e.g. whether or not the men had a pre-disposition to become violent). Because Mandel is only describing one particular incident, perhaps it could be concluded that Milgram’s theory is still applicable to the majority of situations.

Question 23

Evaluation point: ‘One strength of Milgram’s theory stems from research support conducted by Blass and Schmitt’. Write a paragraph outlining this AO3 point.

Answer 23

One strength of Milgram’s theory stems from research support conducted by Blass and Schmitt. In 2001, they showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm of the learner. The students played the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant. They also indicated the responsibility was due to legitimate authority but also due to expert authority (he was a scientist). This therefore acts as a strength of Milgram’s theory because it supports his proposal that an agent (the learner) ‘hands over’ responsibility to an individual with legitimate authority (the experimenter). This increases the internal validity of Milgram’s study because Blass and Schmitt are in support of his concepts. Additionally, because findings have remained consistent over time, his theory can be rewarded for being high in both reliability and temporal validity.