Social Psychological Factors-agentic State & LOA

Question 1

Explain agentic state

Answer 1

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure - acting as their agent.

Question 2

Autonomous state

Answer 2

The opposite of being in an agentic state. A person in an Autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility of their own actions.

Question 3

What is the shift called from autonomy to ‘agency’ and when does this occur?

Answer 3

Agentic shift. Milgram suggested this occurs when a person perceives someone else an authority figure. This other person has greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy.

Question 4

What are binding factors?

Answer 4

Aspects of the situation that allows the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the ‘moral strain’ they are feeling. Milgram propoded a number of strategies that the individual uses such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victim.

Question 5

Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses such as..

Answer 5

Shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victims.

Question 6

Legitimacy of authority

Answer 6

An explanation for 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 individuals position of power within a social hierarchy.

Question 7

Destructive authority

Answer 7

History has too often shown that charismatic and powerful leaders cna use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in cruel or dangerous ways for example. Destructive authority was shown in Milgrams study, when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their conciences.

Question 8

AO3- research support

Answer 8

Blass and Schmitt showed a film of Milgrams study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner. The students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather than the participant. The students also indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate authority (‘experimenter was top of the hierarchy) but also due to expert authority (he was a scientist)

Question 9

AO3- a limited explanation

Answer 9

Doesnt explain many of the research findings. For example, it doesnt explain why some of the participants did not obey. The agentic shift explanation also doesnt explain the findings from Hofling et al.’s study. The agentic shift explanation predicts that as the nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor they should have shown levels of anxiety similar to Milgramas participants, as they understood their role in a destructive process. But this was not the case.

Question 10

AO3- real-life crimes of obedience

Answer 10

A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it can help explain how obedience can lead to real-life war crimes. For example, Kelman and Hamilton argue that the My Lai massacre can be understood in temrs of the power hierarchy of the US army.