Social-Psychological Explanations of Obedience

A01-Agentic state

• A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour,

• This frees us from the demand of our consciousness and allows us to obey even destructive authority figures

A01-Autonomous state

• person is free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their actions. This is our ‘default’ state.

A01-Agentic shift

• The shift from autonomy to agency. Milgram (1974) suggested that this occurs when someone perceives someone else as an authority figure, because they have a higher position in a social hierarchy.

A01-Agentic shift

• The shift from autonomy to agency. Milgram (1974) suggested that this occurs when someone perceives someone else as an authority figure, because they have a higher position in a social hierarchy.

A01-Legitimacy of Authority

• Authority is agreed by society we allow certain people to exercise some social power over us in order for society to run smoothly

A01-Destructive Authority

• History has shown that charismatic and powerful leaderscan use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel and dangerous. 

• Destructive authority was obvious in Milgram’s study, when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.

A03-Research Support(legitimacy of authority)

• Tarnow (2000) studied a US National Transportation Safety Board review of all serious aircraft incidents in the US between 1978 and 1990 where a flight voice recorder was available and where flight crew actions were a contributing factor in the crash.

• He found excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise – one second officer claimed that although he noticed the captain taking a particularly risky approach, he said nothing as he assumed ‘the captain must know what he’s doing’.

A03-Cultural Variationt(legitimacy of authority)

• Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient to authority. For example Kilham and 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 very different figures for German participants - 85%.

A03-research support

• Milgram’s own studies support the role of the agentic state in obedience. Most of Milgram’s participants resisted giving shocks at some point, and often asked the experimenter questions about the procedure. 

  
  

• One of these questions was ‘who is responsible if Mr Wallace is harmed?’ When informed the experimenter was responsible, the participants often went through the procedure quickly with no further objections.

A03-Obedience Alibi

• David Mandel (1998) described one incident in the Second World War involving German Reserve Police Battalion 101. These men shot many civilians in a small town in Poland, despite not having direct orders to do so - they were told they could be assigned to other duties if they preferred.