Situational explanations

Situational explanations are those that are focused on the situation or environment that obedience takes place in

Agentic state

• Obedience might happen because we believe that we are acting on behalf of someone else

• We become an agent of this person- as if we can’t disobey

• Agentic shift is where we move from an autonomous state to an agentic state

Binding factors

• What keeps us in agentic state

• Many of milgrams p’s said they wanted to stop but continued

• Binding factors allowed p’s to ignore effects of behaviour

• Milgram proposed we use techniques such as blaming victims or denying the victims were hurt to reduce guilt

Legitimacy of authority

• For us to move into agentic state, we need to perceive that there is legitimate authority

• In milgrams study, the experimenter wearing a white coat acted as a legitimate authority figure

• A consequence of authority is punishment can benefit us

• Learn to accept authority figures decisions from a young age

Destructive authority

• Problems do happen when legitimate authority becomes destructive

• May order people to behave in ways which are cruel/harmful

-milgrams research supports them

-milgrams research was a lab experiment

-research support in real life scenarios

-agentic state cannot explain a number of research findings