Social Learning : Obedience - Situational Explanation Flashcards
Who proposed the concept of an agentic state and why?
Milgram proposed the concept of an agentic state to explain why people readily obey orders, even when they go against our morals.
Eg Eichmann had been in a trial for being in charge of the Nazi death camps and his defence was that he was simply following orders
What is the agentic state?
A mental state where we don’t feel responsibility for our actions and instead believe we are acting for someone else (who has authority) as an agent
What is meant by an agent?
An agent is a person who acts for or in place of another. They feel moral strain when they realise what they are doing is wrong.
What is moral strain?
The distress/anxiety that comes with feeling obliged to follow an order that violates our own morals.
What is an autonomous state?
When a person behaves freely according to their own principles and feels responsibility for their own actions.
When did Milgram suggest the agentic shift usually occurs?
When a person sees someone else as an authority figure as they have a higher position in a social hierarchy.
What are binding factors?
Aspects of a situation that keep people in an agentic state by allowing them to ignore the damaging effect of their behaviour
What binding factors may have been present in Milgram’s study?
- reluctance to disrupt experiment
- fear of being punished
- putting blame on the victim
Evaluate the agentic state?
✅ One strength of the agentic state as an explanation of obedience is that it is supported by research, including Milgram’s own studies
- many of Milgram’s P.s were hesitant to give the electric shocks and questioned the E to see who would be responsible if Mr Wallace was harmed
- when they found out that it would be the E who would take responsibility, P.s continued procedure without objecting
- this means that when P.s no longer felt responsible for their actions, they obeyed the E much more readily, as Milgram suggested.
❌ One limitation of the agentic shift is that it doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience
- eg in a study by Rank + Jacobson, 16/18 nurses disobeyed a doctors orders to give a patient an overdose of a drug
- despite the doctor clearly being a legitimate, authority figure, the nurses remained in an autonomous state
- this means that the agentic shift can only explain some situations of obedience
What is meant by legitimacy of authority?
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 by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy.
What is a consequence of legitimacy of authority?
- some people become entitled to punish others
- this leads to people willingly giving up their independence and autonomy so that people we trust can exercise their authority appropriately
- issues are also introduced when legitimate authority becomes destructive - eg powerful leaders like Hitler have used their authority for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel, dangerous and immoral
Evaluate legitimacy of authority
✅ One strength of the legitimacy explanation is that it explains cultural differences in obedience
- many studies show that countries differ in the extent to which people are obedient to authority
- eg Kilham + Mann found that only 16% of female Australian P.s went all the way up to 450 V in a Milgram-style study whereas Mantell found that this significantly increased in German P.s to 85%
- this means that, in some cultures, people are more likely to accept authority as legitimate and so obey orders more readily. This reflects that way that different cultures are structured and how children are raised to view authority figures
❌ One limitation is that legitimacy cannot explain situations where people disobey orders, even when there is a clear legitimacy of authority
- eg nurses in Rank and Jacobson’s study
- eg many of Milgram’s P.s also disobeyed the E
- this suggests that some people are more/less likely to be obedient, simply due to dispositional reasons, like different personalities - it is possible that innate tendencies to obey/disobey have a greater influence on behaviour than the legitimacy of an authority figure
