Obedience: Situational explanations

Agentic state

-Milgram proposed that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsibility for it. The person believes they are acting for someone else, so whatever they may do cannot be blamed on them

Autonomous state

- Free to behave according to their own principles, there is a sense of responsibility for their actions

Agentic shift

- Autonomy to agency

- Milgram (1974) suggested that this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority; greater power because of their position in a social hierarchy

Binding factors (Agentic state)

- Milgram also suggested these are why an individual stays in their agentic state. Aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the 'moral strain' they are feeling. May be done by shifting the responsibility to the victim or by denying the damage they have caused

Legitimacy of authority

- Created by the hierarchical nature of society; the authority someone wields is seen as legitimate in the sense that it is agreed by society. We learn acceptance of authority from childhood, accepting the fact they are the granted the power to punish others if we trust them to exercise their authority appropriately

Strengths of legitimacy of authority

• Useful account of cultural differences in obedience.

• Kilham and Mann (1974) found that only 16% of australian women went all the way to 450 volts in a Milgram style study. However Mantell 1971 found that german pps obedience was 85% for 450 volts

• Such supportive findings from cross-cultural research increases the validity of the explanation

Weaknesses of legitimacy of authority

- It is a limited explanation. The agentic shift doesn't explain many of the research findings. For example, it does not explain why some of the participants did not obey (humans involved in social hierarchies should theoretically all obey)

- This suggests that, at best, agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience

Legitimacy of Authority and Destructive Authority

- This causes problems, for example powerful leaders like Hitler using their powers for destructive purposes. This was clearly shown In Milgram's study

Strength of agentic state

• Milgram’s study supports the role of the agentic state in obedience. 

• Most of the pps resisted giving shocks at some point, one question commonly asked was ‘who is responsible if the learner is harmed. The Experimenter would reply I’m, responsible. The pps often went through the procedure without further objections. 

• This matters because it shows once the pp did not believe they were responsible they they acted more easily. 

Limitation of agentic state

• One problem with the agentic shift is that it does not always explain research findings about obedience. 

• Rank and Jacobson 1977 conducted a study into hospital nurses. 16 out of 18 nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose. 

• This matters because although the Doctor is clear an authority figure the nurses remained autonomous. This explanation cannot account for this research. 

• HOWEVER, in Hofling et al.’s (1966) experiment, 21 out of 22 nurses started to give the medication until stopped by another nurse nearby. When interviewed after, they all said that they were regularly asked by Doctors to go against their training and the rules.