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Obedience: Social-psychological factors (Explanation 1: Agentic state…
Obedience: Social-psychological factors
Explanation 1: Agentic state
Milgram proposed that obedience to destructive . authority occurs because a person becomes an 'agent', someone who acts for or in place of another.
An agentic occurs when we act on behalf of another person
In agentic state a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions
The opposite of an agentic state is an autonomous state
'Autonomy' means to be independent or free. So a person in a autonomous state behaves according to their own principles and feels responsible to their own actions
Agentic shift occurs when a person defers to the authority figure.
The shift from autonomy to being an 'agent' is called the agentic shift. Milgram suggested that this occurs when we perceive someone else as an authority figure. This person has power because of their position in a social hierarchy
Binding factors reduce the 'moral strain' of obeying immoral orders.
Binding factors are aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce the 'moral strain' they feel
Milgram proposed a number of strategies the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they are doing to victims
Explanation 2: Legitmacy of authority
We obey people at the top of a social hierarchy
Most societies are structured in a hierarchal way. This means that people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us e.g. teachers, police etc. The power they have is legitimate in the sense that it is agreed by society.
Authority figures have to be allowed to exercise social power over others to allow society to function smoothly.
One of the consequences of this legitimacy of authority, is that some people are granted the power to punish others. People are willing to give up their independence and hand control of their behaviour over to people they trust to exercise their authority appropiately.
Charismatic and powerful leaders e.g. Hitler can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are callous, cruel, stupid and dangerous. Destructive authority was very clearly on show in Milgram's study, when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.
Evaluation
Strength: supported by research evidence
- Blass and Schmidt (2001) showed a film of Milgram's study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner. The students blamed the experimenter rather than the participant and also indicated that the responsibility was due to legitimate and expert authority. This is a strength because they recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting the explanation
Strength: supported by research evidence
- Kilham and Mann (1974) replicated Milgram's procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of the participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale, whereas Mantell (1971) found that 85% of German participants did so. This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate. This reflects the ways different societies are structured and how people are taught to perceive authority figures. Such findings from cross-cultural research increase the validity of the explanation
Weakness: the behaviour of the Nazis cannot be explained in terms of the agentic shift
- Mandel (1998) described one incident involving a German battalion where men obeyed orders to shoot civilians despite the fact that they did not have direct orders to do so and were told they could be assigned another duty if preferred. This is a limitation of the agentic shift explanation because the men shot civilians without direct orders from an authority figure, meaning that they could not have transferred responsibility to them