Psychological Explanations for Obedience

Question 1

What is agentic state?

Answer 1

• People may obey authority as they believe they are acting as an ‘agent’ on behalf of an authority figure
• When in an agentic state they are more likely to obey
• Thus they hold the authority figure responsible for their own actions
• This is the opposite of autonomous state where people act on their own principles and take responsibility for their actions
• People are normally in autonomous state but shift to agentic state when given orders by an authority figure

Question 2

How did Milgram investigate agentic state?

Answer 2

• Interviewed his PPs during the debrief to ask them why they obeyed the experimenter
• Found that many knew it was wrong to give dangerous electric shocks but felt the experimenter was responsible for their actions
• This shows that they shifted responsibility to the authority figure

Question 3

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 3

• Amount of social power held by instruction giver
• Social power = often associated with social roles e.g. police or social status e.g. older relative
• If you perceive someone as having social power you see them as a legitimate authority figure - thus more likely to obey
• This is especially true if authority figure has power to punish us or we trust their instructions due to their expertise

Question 4

How did Milgram investigate legitimacy of authority?

Answer 4

• Conducted many variations of the study where the legitimacy of the authority figure was changed
• Found that each time the legitimacy of the authority figure was undermined - e.g. replacing them with a random volunteer from the public - levels of obedience decreased
• This shows that we are more likely to obey authority we consider legitimate

Question 5

How does Tarnow support legitimacy of authority?

Answer 5

• A strength of LOA is that it has research support
• Tarnow studied data from air traffic accidents and found that 19 out of 37 accidents had authority of the captain as a main cause
• This is because it led to co-pilots feeling unable to challenge their wrong decisions
• This supports the role of LOA as it shows that social roles held by authority figures e.g. pilots causes their orders to often be obeyed even if they’re wrong
• Also as this evidence comes from real life cases it shows that LOA is an important factor in obedience even outside the lab
• This validates LOA as an explanation of obedience

Question 6

How is generalisability a weakness?

Answer 6

• A limitation of agentic state is that research supporting it as an explaantion of obedience is gender-biased
• Milgram’s research only used male PPs. This is a weakness because we don’t know if agentic state has the same effect on females as it does for male obedience
• Kilham and Mann found that females have lower rates of obedience suggesting they may be less likely to enter an agentic state when given orders by an authority figure
• This reduces the population validity of research into the role of agentic state in obedience and so the explanation itself

Question 7

How does Adorno weaken the theory?

Answer 7

• A limitation of psychological explanations of obedience is that they don’t account for the role of personality factors in obedience
• Adorno argued that individuals who had a strict upbringing develop an authoritarian personality and have an excessive respect for authority making them highly obedient
• This supported by Elms and Milgram who found that the obedient PPs from Milgram’s study were more likely to have an authoritarian personality as they had higher scores on the F-scale than the disobedient PPs
• This shows that psychological factors aren’t the only thing affecting obedience as personality factors like authoritarian personality also play a role
• This decreases the validity of psychological explanation