SOC 11 - Situational explanations of obedience

Question 1

What is an agent?

Answer 1

Someone who acts for or in place of another

Question 2

What is an agentic state?

Answer 2

• 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 conscience and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure
• It requires the prescence of an authority figure and a moral dilemma/moral strain

Question 3

What is an autonomous state?

Answer 3

When an individual is free to behave independently/according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions

Question 4

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 4

• An explanation of obedience which suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us
• This authority is justified (legitimate) by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy

Question 5

What is an agentic shift?

Answer 5

• The shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state

Question 6

Why does an agentic shift occur?

Answer 6

• Because of existing social hierarchies, we accept that some people have more power or authority than others, so when asked to do something against our principles, we are in a psychological dilemma
• To ease that dilemma, we slip into the agentic state

Question 7

What keeps you in the agentic state?

Answer 7

• Situation make it difficult for you to stop obeying due to binding factors and buffers

Question 8

What is a binding factor?

Answer 8

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

Question 9

What is a buffer?

Answer 9

Protecting yourself from seeing the consequences of your actions

Question 10

What is one strength of the theory of the agentic state?

Answer 10

• One strength is that Milgram’s own studies support it
• Most of Milgram’s participants resisted giving the shocks at some point and often asked the Experimenter questions about the procedure
• When participants questioned who would be responsible if the learner was harmed, they were told that the Experimenter would be responsible
• Because of this, participant often went through the procedure quickly with no further objections

Question 11

What are the limitations of the theory of the agentic state?

Answer 11

• It doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience. For example, it doesn’t explain the findings of Steven Rank and Cardell Jacobson’s study (1977)
• David Mandel (1998) described one incidenet in WWII involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101

Question 12

What research was conducted by Rank and Jacobson’s (1997)? And how does it disprove the theory of the agentic state?

Answer 12

They found out that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed order 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. This suggests that, at best, the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience

Question 13

What incident did Mandel describe?

Answer 13

• David Mandel (1998) described one incident in WWII involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101. These men shot many civilians in a small town in Poland, despite not having direct to do so (they were told they could be assigned to other duties if they preferred), i.e. they behaved autonomously

Question 14

What are the strengths of the theory of the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 14

• One strength of the legitimacy explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience
• Many studies show the level of obedience to authority differs between countries. For example, Wesley Kilham and Leon Mann (1974) found that only 16% of Australian women went all the way up to 450 volts in a Milgram-style study
• However, David Mantell (1971) found a very different figure for German participants – 85%
• This shows that, in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals
• This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures

Question 15

What are the limitations of the theory of the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 15

• One limitation is that legitimacy cannot explain instances of disobedience in a hierarchy where the legitimacy of authority is clear and accepted. This includes the nurses in Rank and Jacobson’s study.
• In Holfing’s study, there were high levels of obedience due to the legitimate authority of the doctor in their social hierarchy

Question 16

How does the research conducted by Rank and Jacobson’s disprove the theory of the legitimacy of authority?

Answer 16

• Most of them were disobedient despite working in a rigidly hierarchical authority structure
• Also, a significant minority of Milgram’s participants disobeyed despite recognising the Experimenter’s scientific authority
• This suggests that some people may just be more (or less) obedient than others
• It is possible that innate tendencies to obey or disobey have a greater influence on behaviour than the legitimacy of an authority figure

Question 17

How can obedience be linked to real world crimes of obedience?

Answer 17

• Rank and Jacobson found that nurses were prepared to disobey a legitimate authority (a doctor).
• But Herbert Kelman and Lee Hamilton (1989) argue that a real-world crime of obedience (the My Lai massacre) can be understood in terms of the power hierarchy of the US Army. Commanding officers (COs) operate within a clearer legitimate hierarchy than hospital doctors and have a greater power to punish.