Obedience:Situational Explanations Flashcards
What is the Agentic State?
A person sees themself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes.
How does someone in the agentic state think?
A common way of thinking for the obedient individual is to see themselves as not being responsible for their own actions.
How do people in the Agentic stat act?
Attribute responsibility to someone else-someone else who they perceive to have a position of authority.
What did Milgram refer to this process of shifting responsibility as?
Agentic Shift.
What does the agentic shift involve?
Moving from an autonomous state where a person ‘sees themselves as responsible for their own actions’ and into an agentic state in which a person ‘sees themself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes’.
What did Milgram say about the Agentic State?
That we are taught to enter an agentic state as children because we are trained from a young age to respect and follow the orders of authority figures in society.
Agentic State as children and growing up. What can it lead to?
It becomes something we think is normal so that we do it without really thinking-can lead to blind obedience.
When a person has entered AS, what keeps them in it?
PART 1
-In social situations and experiments there is a social etiquette that plays a role in regulating behaviour. In order to break off the experiment, the pp must breach the commitment that they made to the experimenter.
When a person has entered AS, what keeps them in it?
PART 2
-Subject fears that if he breaks off, he’ll appear rude and arrogant so this behaviour is not taken lightly.
-Emotions help bind the subject into obedience.
What is the first condition needed for a person to shift to the AS?
The perception of legitimate authority. This is someone who is perceived to be in position of social control within a situation.
Where does the power of legitimacy authority stem from?
Not any personal characteristics but from his or her perceived position in a social situation.
How is this reflected in Milgram’s study?
The pp enters the lab with an expectation that someone will be in charge. The experimenter upon first presentation fills this role of them.
-He does this through introductory remarks and as this and the experimenters ‘air’ of authority fits the pps expectation of encountering ‘someone in charge’ it is not challenged.
How can problems arrise?
When legitimate authority becomes destructive.
Destructive Authority and History
History has shown that charismatic and powerful leaders (Hitler) can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel and dangerous.
How was destructive authority obvious in Milgram’s study?
The experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.
