situational explanations for obedience Flashcards
What is an ‘autonomous state’?
When a person acts according to their own conscience and feels responsible for their actions
What is an ‘agentic state’?
-When a person no longer acts independently, according to their own conscience- they act according to the commands of authority
What is ‘Moral Strain’?
Occurs if someone obeys an order that goes against their conscience
What is an ‘agentic shift’?
The movement from a state of autonomy to an agentic state when confronted by an authority figure
What are ‘Binding Factors’?
Aspects of a situation that allow a person to minimize the damaging effects of their behaviour.
How do ‘Binding Factors’ facilitate obedience?
They act as a form of protection to help people minimize the strain of obeying an immoral or unethical command
Explain the idea of ‘Legitimate Authority’?
-The person feels obliged to obey because they respect the person in authority and trust they know what they are doing
-the authority figures are socially accepted therefore have the right to exert power over others
Explain ‘Gradual Commitment’?
-once people obey to a ‘harmless’ request they find it easier to carry it more serious requests
-It may be difficult to disengage because of the gradual (yet escalating) nature of requests
What are the limitations of the explanations for obedience?
-Agentic shift doesn’t apply to all research findings
-cannot explain all (dis)obedience
What are the strengths of the explanations for obedience?
-real world applications
-research support
Explain the limitation of explanations for obedience that agentic shift doesn’t apply to all research findings?
-This doesn’t explain the findings or Rank and Jakobson’s study.
-They found that 16/18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an overdose of a drug to a patient.
-The doctor was an obvious authority figure, however, almost all nurses remained autonomous.
-This suggests that, at best, the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.
Explain the limitation of explanations for obedience that it cannot explain all (dis)obedience?
-This includes Rank and Jacobson’s study.
-Most of them were disobedient, despite working in a rigidly hierarchical authority structure
-This suggests that some people may just be more obedient than others.
-it is possible that innate tendencies to obey or disobey have a greater influence on behaviour than the legitimacy off an authority figure
Explain the strength of explanations for obedience that there are real world applications?
-The actions of the soldiers during the Holocaust could be explained by legitimate authority.
-The presence of Hitler, the president of Germany at the time, would have made the Nazi’s feel like they had to obey
-Agentic state applies to the Nuremberg Defense, where many Nazi soldiers argued in court that they were ‘just following orders’
-The fact that those who had defied Nazi control in the past had all been killed could be considered a ‘Binding Factor’
-Though an extreme example, this shows that there are real world examples to support these ideas.
Explain the strength of explanations for obedience that there is research support?
-Milgram found that most of his participants resisted giving shocks at some point and asked whether they would be held responsible
-When assured that they wouldn’t, they would continue administering shocks without question
-This shows us that once participants perceived they were not longer responsible for their own behaviour, they acted more readily as an agent of the experimenter.
-This provides validity for the idea of agentic state as an explanation for obedience
