Social Influence - Explanations of Obedience Flashcards
1
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The Agentic State - Definition
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- The way in which an individual may obey an order, perhaps to do something that they may see as ‘wrong’ because the individual hands over responsibility for the outcome of the action the authority figure; the individual sees themselves as acting as an agent for the authority figure and therefore does not feel responsible
2
Q
The Autonomous State - Definition
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- Opposite of agentic state - the individuals see themselves as personally responsible for their actions
3
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The Agentic State Explanation of Obedience
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- Milgram proposed the idea of agency theory, arguing we are socialised from an early age to learn that obedience and rules are necessary to preserve stability within society
- However, in order to do this, an individual has to give up some of their free will (the ability to have conscious control over thoughts and actions)
- When an individual does have control, and acts according to their wishes, they are in autonomous state
- When an individual obeys an authority figure, they are in an agentic state, where the agent of authority gives orders
- When in the agentic state, a person becomes deindividuated, losing their individuality and so obey orders against their moral code as they do not see themselves as responsible
- This theory therefore sees obedience as occurring in a hierarchical social system where individuals act as agents for and so obey those of perceived higher ranks than themselves
- Adolf Eichmann, for example, identified himself as being in the agentic state when instigating the Final Solution - he stated he was ‘only following orders’, complying to those of a higher-ranked authority than himself, and so did not see himself as responsible
4
Q
Milgram’s Research and Agency Theory
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- ‘Remote’ authority variation of the procedure, where obedience dropped to 20.5%, suggesting participants were in the autonomous state and saw themselves as responsible for their actions
- Milgram reported that many participants in his study were under moral strain, as during debriefing many admitted they knew their actions were wrong - however, they continued to obey, suggesting they were in the agentic state and felt they had to obey a higher authority figure
5
Q
The Legitimacy of Authority - Explanation of Obedience
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- Definition; the degree to which individuals are seen as justified in having power over others
- Obedient individuals accept power and status of authority figures to give orders; they are seen as being in charge
- This again links to the agency theory that individuals are socialised to recognise the value of obedience to authority figures as preserving a stable society
- From an early age, people experience examples of social roles relating to master and servant relationships where we learn to obey those higher in the social hierarchy
- The emphasis is on perceived duty
- Milgram’s research shows this, as they were simply doing their duty after recognising the legitimacy of the authority of the experimenter
6
Q
Case studies - explanations of obedience; Airlink Flight 5719 disaster:
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- On 3rd December 2003, the New York Times reported how Northwest Airlink Flight 5719 descended too quickly and crashed before it hit the runway in Hibbing, Minnesota. All 18 people on board died. The aircraft struck the top of a tree, continued for 634 feet, and then struck a group of aspen trees. Finally, the plane collided with two ridges and came to rest inverted and lying on its right side. The crash site was so isolated and the night so dark and thick with fog and freezing drizzle that no one saw the plane hit the side of the hill.
- Investigators recovered the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, which would turn out to be a crucial piece of evidence. Rather than mechanical failure, the tragedy would prove to be the result of obedience. Investigators found that the captain had flown the plane inappropriately and given incorrect instructions, but had not been challenged in doing so by his co-pilot; a new probationary employee who knew that to challenge his captain could have a detrimental effect on his career. Further investigations revealed that other co-pilots had not previously reported that the captain often issued irregular commands, violated company policies by sleeping in-flight and also flew with mechanical irregularities.
7
Q
Case study - Explanations of obedience; Wayne Jowett
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In 2001, 18 year-old Wayne, in remission from leukaemia, died when a cancer drug was wrongly injected into his spine instead of a vein. He died one month later from creeping paralysis after being in such pain that it sometimes took six nurses to hold him down. A junior doctor incorrectly injected a first drug, Cytosine, into Wayne’s spine and was surprised when he was given a second syringe of Vincristine and told to inject it by a more senior doctor into the boy’s spine, as he was aware that this wasn’t the correct procedure. However, he didn’t challenge the decision on the assumption that the more senior doctor knew what he was doing.
8
Q
Evaluation of the explanations of obedience - Supporting evidence
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- Researchers showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner, Mr Wallace. The students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant. The students also indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority (the experimenter was top of the hierarchy and therefore had legitimate authority) but also due to expert authority (he was a scientist).
- The participants recognised the legitimacy of the authority as a cause of obedience, supporting the validity of the explanation of obedience. - This explanation is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority. For example, in Australia only 16% went to the top of the shock generator, and in Germany 85% of participants did. 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.
- This suggests that the explanation can be considered to be externally valid as it can be used to explain differences in cross-cultural research findings. (legitimacy of authority)
9
Q
Evaluation of explanations of obedience - Real-world application
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- The explanation can help to explain how obedience can lead to real-life war crimes. It has been argued that the My Lai massacre can be understood in terms of the power hierarchy in the US military. (Both explanations)
- This suggests that the explanations are externally valid and may help to prevent such occurrences from happening again.
10
Q
Evaluation of explanations of obedience - Weaknesses
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- This explanation cannot explain many research findings. For example, it cannot explain why some of Milgram’s participants did not obey (humans are social animals and involved in social hierarchies and therefore should all obey). The explanation also does not explain the findings from Hofling et al.’s study of nurses. The explanation would predict that as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgram’s participants as they understood their role in a destructive process. However, this was not the case.
- This suggests that the agentic state can only account for some situations of obedience and so cannot be considered to be a completely externally valid explanation of obedience. (Agentic State) - There is research that suggests that the behaviour of the Nazis cannot be explained in terms of authority and agentic shift. The German Reserve Battalion 101 obeyed orders to shoot civilians in a small town in Poland. This was despite the fact that they did not have direct orders to do so (they were told that they could be assigned to other duties if they preferred).
- As the soldiers were able to choose another duty instead, they shouldn’t experience agentic shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state. Therefore, the explanation can’t be considered to be completely valid as it can’t explain obedience in every situation. (Agentic State)
11
Q
The dispositional explanation of obedience
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- This is an internal explanation of obedience, as it focuses on the perception of behaviour as caused by internal characteristics of the individual, and that some particular traits are associated with higher obedience levels
- This formed the basis of Milgram’s research aim, investigating whether Germans had a different personality type that made them unquestioningly obedient to authority figures
- The authoritarian personality was first proposed by Fromm (1941) as an attempt to explain those holding right-wing, conservative views and is a personality type characterised in the belief in absolute obedience, submission to authority and hostility to those of lower status or members of an out-group (‘Might is Right’)
12
Q
Adorno et al (1950)
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- Saw people of this type as having insecurities that led them to be hostile to non-conventional people and having a belief in a need for power and toughness, leading them to be highly obedient to authority figures
- In addition, he also saw the personality type as being shaped in early childhood by hierarchical, authoritarian parenting
- To measure an individual’s degree of authoritarian personality, Adorno constructed the F-Scale questionnaire, consisting of 30 questions assessing 9 personality dimensions (F stands for fascists)
- More recently, Jose et al (2003) have claimed that the authoritarian personality is motivated by thought processes which underpin a desire to reduce the fears and anxieties that social change brings - strict obedience to authority is seen as helping to prevent disruptive social change
- He felt prejudice was from a personality flaw
13
Q
The F-Scale - 9 personality dimensions
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- Conventionalism: Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values. (1, 2, 3, 4)
- Authoritarian Submission: Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup. (1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
- Authoritarian Aggression: Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values. (2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
- Anti-intraception: Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded. (3, 4, 17, 18)
- Superstition and Stereotypy: The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories. (5, 6, 19, 20, 21, 22)
- Power and “Toughness”: Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness. (8, 11, 12, 20, 23, 24, 25, 30)
- Destructiveness and Cynicism: Generalized hostility, vilification of the human. (26, 27)
- Projectivity: The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses. (18, 22, 25, 28, 29)
- Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on.” (13, 16, 29)
14
Q
The authoritarian personality
A
- This is a dispositional explanation of obedience i.e. it focuses on the importance of the individual’s personality in explaining their behaviour.
- It is a collection of dispositions/traits that develop from strict parenting, such as being conformist, conventional and dogmatic. Such people have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority.
15
Q
Key evaluation points of the F-Scale
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- Political bias – it measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology. However, there is also left-wing authoritarianism. Therefore, research using this cannot support that the theory is a comprehensive explanation of obedience that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum. The results were also villanising of anyone who was not authoritarian with categories such as ‘liberal airhead’
- Methodological problems e.g. all questions are worded in the same direction, which can lead to an acquiescence bias (tendency to just agree with everything). Therefore, from research using the F-scale, internal validity of the dispositional explanation is not strongly supported.
