Obedience: situational explanations

What sparked Milgram’s interest in obedience

The trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 for war crimes - he had been in charge of the Nazi death camps and his defence was that he was only obeying orders

What is 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, as their agent. This frees us from the demands of our conscience and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure

What is autonomous state

The opposite of being in an agentic state. You are free to behave according to your own principles and feel a sense of responsibility for your actions

What is the shift from autonomy to agency called and why does this occur

Agentic shift. Milgram suggested it occurs when a person perceives someone else as an authority figure

What are binding factors and what examples did Milgram propose

Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour, therefore reducing the “moral strain” they are feeling. Milgram proposed that they shifted the responsibility to the victim - "he was foolish to volunteer”, or deny the damage they did to victims

What is legitimacy of authority

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 (legitimate) by the individual’s position of power within a social hierarchy

What is one of the major consequences of legitimacy of authority

Some people are granted the power to punish others - e.g we generally agree that the police and courts have the power to punish wrongdoers, so we are willing to give up some of our independence and hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately

When do we learn acceptance of legitimiate authority

From childhood - from parents initially and then teachers and adults generally

When do problems arise with legitimacy of authority and what does it turn into

Destructive authority. History has often shown that powerful charismatic leaders (Hitler, Stalin etc.) can use their legimitate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in cruel and dangerous ways

What is one strength

Milgram’s own studies support the role of the agentic state in obedience - most participants resisted giving shocks at some point, and often asked the Experimenter qs about the procedure. One qs was “Who is responsible if the Learner is harmed? When the Experimenter replied “I’m responsible”, the participants often went through with it with no further objections, showing that once they perceived they were no longer responsible for their own behaviour they acted more easily as the Experimenter’s agent

What is a limitation

The agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience. For example, it doesn’t explain the findings of Steven Rank and Cardell Jacobson’s (1977) study. They found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient. The doctor was an obvious authority figure, but almost all the nurses remained autonomous, as did many of Milgram’s participants. This suggests that at best agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience

What is another strength

The legitimacy of authority explanation is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient to authority. For example, Wesley Kilham and Leon Mann (1974) found that only 16% of Australian women went all the way up to 450 volts in a Milgram-style study. However, David Mantell (1971) found a very different figure for German participants - 85%. This shows that, in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and therefore entitled to demand obedience from individuals. This reflects the ways that diff societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures

What is a limitation

Legitimacy of authority cannot explain instances of disobedience in a hierarchy where the legitimacy of authority is clear and accepted. This includes the nurses in Rank and Jacobson’s study previously mentioned. Most of them were disobedient despite working in a rigidly hierarchal authority structure. Also, a significant minority of Milgram’s participants disobeyed despite recognising the Experimenter’s scientific authority - suggests that some people may just simply be more (or less) obedient than others. This means it is possible that innate tendencies to obey or disobey have a greater influence on behaviour than the legitimacy of an authority figure