Explanations and evaluation of obedience

what are the 2 explanations for obedience?

- legitimate authority

- agentic state

Explain legitimate authority

when we obey someone with a higher social status or a role where they can exert control/power over others

We trust them and think they know what they are doing

Explain agentic state

when a person operates and makes decisions on behalf of someone else as they can pass on the responsibilty of their actions to them

they consider themselves an 'agent' of the authority figure

Explain the idea of being autonomous

when someone acts of their independent will and know that they are responsible and accountable of their actions

Evaluate legitimacy of authority as an explanation of Obedience

- Bickman's experiment

- hired 3 male actors who dressed up as a milkman, security and in ordinary clothes

- they asked public to pical up a bag give, money for a parking meter and stand on other side of the road

- guard = 76% , milkman = 47% , pedestrian = 30%

- proves that authority figure has a greater status = more legitimate authority = more obedience

- CAN BE TO REAL LIFE SITUATIONS - WW2 helps understand how 'normal' people were able to commit such horrible Acts and that highly sensitive people are not personnaly responsible for actions

Evaluate the Hofling experiment as explanation of Obedience

- Field experiment with 22 real night shift nurses

- Dr smith (researcher) calls at psychiatric hospital and HIS nurses to administer double dosage of the drug astrofen to patient

- this broke 3 rules: nurses aren't allowed to take instructions on the phone, astrofen is unauthorised drug and

double dose of astrofen is not allowed

- 21 out of 22 nurses were about to do it

- shows us how people are unwilling to question authority even with good reason to

- more legitimate authority = more likely to be obeyed and in the agentic state

Name and explain another dispositional factor for obedience

- The Authoritarian personality

- when someone is most likely to be obedient and respect and obey those in power

- they attempt to esxerase power on those beneath them in social status

- due to strict upbringing with dogmatic parents who are emotionally distant

- are right wing and believe that society needs strong leadership and that there are no grey areas in morality

Evaluate the research evidence to support the authoritarian personality

- Evidence shows authoritarian personality = high obedience

- zimmer et al reported that Nazi war criminals voted nigh on 3 of the F-scale dimensions

- Elms and Milgram also found that highly obedient p's scored higher on F-scale

- this supports however the relevance of the entire F-scale can be questioned so it can be argued whether it's specific personality traits that make us obedient not the entire authoritarian personality

Evaluate the internal validity of authoritarian personality as an explanation

- LACKS internal validity as it's difficult to establish cause and effect between obedience and authoritarian personality = research is correlating and correlation doesn't always mean causation

- In Elms and Milgram's study there could have been other unaccounted variables

- in any retrospective study its not possible to establish effect of something that happened in the past

- highlights difficulty of establishing dispositional basis of any behaviour such as obedience

Evaluate the research bias of the authoritarian personality as an explanation

- thought to be oresearch bias as it's exclusively limited to right wing individuals

- conway in a preliminary study to measure dogmatic and authoritarian views found that left wing people are just as likely to obey/display authoritarian traits as right wing people

- expectations of researchers can shew view of personality types likely to be associated with obedience

- bias limits our understanding