Situational Explanations (Social Influence)

Question 1

What are Milgram’s two explanations for obedience?

Answer 1

1.) Agentic vs autonomous state
2.) Legitimacy of Authority

Question 2

What do we do when we perceive someone to be higher up the social hierarchy than us?

Answer 2

• We act as an agent for them, believing it is not our responsibility but we are simply just following orders.
• This is called acting in a mental ‘agentic state’.

Question 3

When is a moral strain felt?

Answer 3

• If what we are doing is wrong, but we are powerless as we are in a lower position in the social hierarchy.

Question 4

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 4

When we are independent and have free will over our actions

Question 5

What happens when you are ordered by an authority figure?

Answer 5

• When ordered by an authority figure, we make an agentic shift to the agentic state

Question 6

Why do we stay in the agentic state once given orders?

Answer 6

• We stay in the agentic state, even when we want to disobey due to binding factors.
• These are factors of the situation which reduce our moral strain such as reassuring ourselves it is not our responsibility.

Question 7

What is legitimate authority?

Answer 7

• When a person recognises their own and others positions in a social hierarchy, it can be increased by uniform.
• E.g. Teachers, police, security
• We trust that they will exert their power over us appropriately and are willing to give up their independence if they do so.
• As we believe that their authority is legitimate, we act in an agentic state, believing that we are simply following orders and it is their responsibility.

Question 8

What is the AO3 evaluation for the agentic state explanation?

Answer 8

Strengths:
- Most of Milgram’s pps resisted giving the shocks at some point, and often asked the experimenter questions about the procedure such as ‘who is responsible if the learner is harmed?’.
- When the experimenter replied ‘I’m responsible’ the pps often went through the procedure quickly with no further objections.

Limitations:
- Agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience.
E.g. It does not explain Rank and Jacobsons study where they found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient.
- The doctor was an obvious authority figure, but almost all the nurses remained autonomous.

Question 9

What is the AO3 evaluation of legitimacy of authority?

Answer 9

Strengths:
- Useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Kilham and Mann found that only 16% of female Australian pps went all the way to 450V in a Milgram-style study however, Mantell found a very different figure for German pps at 85% reflecting the different ways societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures.

Limitations:
- Cannot explain instances of disobedience where legitimacy of authority is clear. As in Rank and Jacobson’s study and as a significant minority in Milgram’s study - suggesting that some people may just be more or less obedient than others - possible that dispositional factors have a greater influence.