Social Influence - Social Psychological Facotors -obedience Flashcards
What is the agentic state?
Where we see ourselves as agents of others and are not responsible for our action.
What is an autonomous individual theorised by Milgram?
Where we behave voluntarily and are aware of what will happen as a result of our actions.
What is the agentic shift?
When we move from an autonomous state to an agentic state, there is normal moral strain.
What is denial?
Refusing to believe reality.
What are binding factors?
The reason people stay in their agentic state is believed to be because of binding factors. These are aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effects of their behaviour and reduce the moral strain they are feeling.
In Milgram’s research what factors showed agentic state?
- when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey.
- in contrast, many participants who were refusing to go on did os if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.
Give a strength evaluative point for the theory of agentic state
There is empirical evidence that the p’s shifted responsibility onto the experimenter - Blass and Schmitt showed students a film of Milgram’s study and then ask the p’s to decide who was responsible - students said responsibility was due to legitimacy of authority as experimenter was at the top of the hierarchy - increasing he validity of the theory.
Give a limitation of the agentic state theory in terms of it being an incomplete explanation
Cannot explain all situations of obedience; incomplete explanation - in Milgram’s study 35% of p’s didn’t follow instructions, highlighting other factors to account for - also does not fully explain the lack of moral strain by the nurses in Hofling - cannot be generalised.
Evaluation methodological issues as a limitation of the agentic state theory.
Methodological issues that theory is biased - Milgram’s research has demand characteristics, as p’s can guess the results aren’t real ‘please you’-makes a significant impact as it is based on research with low internal validity - challenging the validity of the theory as an explanation of why people obey.
