Obedience: social-psychological factors

What are social psychological factors?

looking at the influence of other people on our behaviour

What is the agency theory?

a mental state where we feel we have no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure. This frees us from the demands of our conscience and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure

What is the autonomous state?

It is the opposite of the agentic state where a person is free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions

What is the agentic state?

Obedience to a destructive authority because the person does not take responsibility. They believe they are acting as an ‘agent’ for someone else, during which they experience high anxiety (moral strain) when they know what they are doing is wrong but feel powerless to disobey

What is it called when someone switches from autonomy to agency?

agentic shift

What are binding factors?

aspects of the situation that keep individuals in the agentic state, such as reducing moral strain (“I was just following orders”) or shifting responsibility to the authority figure

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 are some examples of people who subjectively hold authority and why?

teachers, parents and police because they have authority that is legitimate and accepted by society. We accept that they can exercise social power to allow society to function smoothly. We are willing to give up some of our independence to hand control of our behaviour to people we trust to do it appropriately. We learn them from childhood, parents etc

What is destructive authority?

when legitimate authority is used to order people to behave in cruel or harmful ways (e.g., Hitler, military leaders).

How is the fact that there is research supporting the role of the authority figure in the agentic state a strength?

because it explains why individuals obey when they shift responsibility onto the authority figure. It also makes the explanation more credible and so it is more likely to be trusted and used to understand behaviour

Give an example of this strength

for example, Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed students a film of Milgram’s study and asked them who they thought was responsible for the harm caused to the learner. The students blamed the experimenter not the participant

How is the fact that the agentic state can’t explain all findings a weakness?

as it suggests that dispositional factors such as personality may also play a role, limiting the explanatory power of the agentic state

Give an example of this weakness

for instance, the explanation can’t explain why some participants in Milgram’s study disobeyed. If all participants experienced the same authoritative pressure and entered an agentic state, we would expect obedience rates to be much higher, yet 35% of participants refused to continue to the maximum voltage

How is the fact that the agentic state and legitimacy of authority theories can be used to successfully explain real-life examples of obedience towards destructive authority figures a strength? (+counter/development)

as this real-life application increases the external validity of Milgram’s findings as the agentic state can help us understand and explain large scale atrocities

C: however, it can be argued that this explanation may be too simplistic as it means excusing individuals from moral responsibility for their actions which doesn’t sit well with the justice system

Give an example of this advantage

for example, during the Holocaust, Nazi soldiers followed orders from authority figures, including Hitler, to carry out mass executions of Jews and other minority groups. Many of these soldiers reported that they were “just following orders,” which reflects the shift from an autonomous state to the agentic state, where responsibility is displaced onto the authority figure

How is the fact that legitimacy of authority can be used to explain cultural differences in obedience a strength?

as it suggests that obedience levels differ because in some cultures authority figures are more likely to be accepted as legitimate, reflecting how children are socialised to perceive authority

Give an example of this strength

for instance, research by Kilham and Mann (1974) found only 16% of Australians went to the maximum voltage in a Milgram-style study, whereas Mantell (1971) found 85% of Germans did.