Obedience: situation explanation

Agentic state:

When people believe they have no responsibility for their behaviour, for example Eichmann who was in charge of nazi death camps, his argument was that he was only obeying orders.

Agentic shift:

From an autonomous state to an agentic state. Occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority, this person has greater power due to the social hierarchy

Binding factors:

Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore the damaging effect of their behaviour which reduces the moral strain of their behaviour. E.g. pps shifting responsibility onto the victim like 'he was foolish to volunteer'

Legitimacy of authority:

We are more likely to obey people who we perceive have authority over us, for example a teacher or a police officer. This is because as a society we have a value consensus of people within their social hierarchy.

Destructive authority:

When someone uses their authority to do acts that are unethical and destructive, e.g. when the experimenter used prods to order pps to behaviour in a way that they did not want to

Milgram’s evidence for agency

The participants objected and asked who was responsible if the learner is harmed. However, when finding out the experimenter would be they continued without further objection.

Good cultural findings

Kilham and Mann (1974) found that 16% of pps went to top voltage in Australia but in Germany 85% went to top voltage. Shows how children are brought up to perceive different authority figures in different cultures. Increase the validity of the explanation

Limited explanation

The agentic shift does not explain why people did not obey in Milgram’s study. It also cannot explain why the nurses in Hofling’s study did not show the same levels of anxiety that milgrams study did