Situational explanations

Agentic state

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

Autonomous state

The person is free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their actions

Agentic shift

The change from an autonomous state to an agentic state.

Binding factors

Something that keeps a person in an agentic state by preventing them from acting on their conscience and exiting the situation. Examples

• Pressure from others to not cause distraction

• The legitimacy of the authority figure’s position

• Surroundings and context

Legitimacy of authority

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

Destructive authority

Powerful leaders use their authority power for destructive purposes by ordering people to behave in cruel ways.

Milgram support (AS)

Subjects resisted giving shocks and some asked questions

“Who is responsible if the Learner is hurt?” and Experimenter replies that “I’m (the experimenter) responsible”

Participants were more willing to continue the experiment as they perceived that they were no longer responsible for their actions.

They act as the Experimenter’s agent

Birney 2024 (AS)

Agentic shift cannot explain the results of Milgram’s variations

She pointed out that the extent to which obedience rates varied in different situations suggest obedience is a product of the situations rather than a “natural inclination to obey”.

The agentic state explanation would predict high levels of obedience regardless of the situation but obedience varied from 0% to 100%.

This suggests that all characteristics of the situation need to be taken into account.

Mandel 1998 (AS)

Described one incident in WWII involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101.

The men were not given direct orders to shoot civilian in Poland but did anyway. They were behaving autonomously.

Contradicts obedience alibi

Studies showing that countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient to authority

Kilham and Mann 1974 - Found only 16% of Australian women went all the way to 450V in a Milgram style study.

Mantell 1971 - Found 85% of German participants went all the way to 450V in a Milgram style study

Shows that authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate in some cultures.

Reflects the ways different societies are structured and the differences in how children are raised to perceive authority figures.

Rank and Jacobson 1977 (LoA)

Replicated Hofling 1996 study -

Arranged for an unknown doctor to telephone 22 nurses and ask each of them to give an overdose of drug that was not on their ward list. 95% of the nurses started to give the drug without question

Rank and Jacobson altered some aspects to maximise obedience.

The nurses were spoken directly by a doctor and were told to give an overdose of a real drug that the nurses are familiar with. The nurses also knew the doctor’s name.

2 of 18 nurses obeyed the doctor’s order.

Most of them were disobedient despite working in a hierarchical authority structure.

This suggests that some people may just be more or less obedient than other. It is possible that innate tendencies to obey or disobey have a greater influence on behaviour than the legitimacy of an authority figure.

Kelman and Hamilton 1989 (LoA)

Argued that a real-world crime of obedience can be understoon in terms of the power hierarchy of the US Army.

Commanding officers operate wihin a clearer legitimate hierarchy than the hospital doctors in Rank and Jacobson’s study and have a greater power to punish

Milgram LoA support

The experimenter with a lab coat in Yale university was obeyed more than when the experimenter was just a member of the public