reasons for Obediance Flashcards
What are the two main explanations for obedience?
The agentic state
Legitimacy of Authority
what is the Agentic state explanation for obedience?
Milgram said that people work in two different sates during social situations.
The autonomic state in which they are aware they are responsible for the consequences of their actions.
However when people see themselves under the authority of another person they don’t see themselves as responsible for their actions and obey without question, this is the agentic state. The transition from the first to the second is called the agentic shift.
What are some strengths of the Agentic state explanation?
It is supported by other research such as Blass and Schmidt which showed a film of Milgram’s study to students and the blamed the experimenter not the participant for the harm to the learner.
What are some weaknesses of the Agentic state explanation?
It does not explain why some people don’t obey authority figures when they are supposed to be the agents.
It also doesn’t explain when people harm others even when not given orders to do so such as German police battalion 101 who chose to kill polish civilians.
What is the legitimate Authority explanation for obedience?
We are taught from a young age to obey legitimate authority figures because we may trust them, but also because we fear punishment from them. Legitimate authority can be destructive and example is the nazi’s who where a legitimate authority but killed millions of people.
What are some strengths of the Legitimate authority explanation for obedience?
We need authority figures in society so this explains how society functions , it also explains how real war crimes can occur as people will obey legitimate authority figures out of trust and fear of punishment.
It also explains cultural differences in obedience as when some countries replicated Milgram’s study they had lower obedience rates while some like Germany had higher obedience rates. Different cultures perceive legitimate authority differently depending on their upbringing.
What are some weaknesses of the Legitimate authority explanation for obedience?
Not all legitimate authorities are obeyed however there have been many occasions in which people have obeyed a legitimate authority figure they have disagreed with and done harm to another person
People should balance obeying authority figures with questioning them.
Why do we remain in the Agentic state?
We remain in the Agentic state due to binding factors that allow us to ignore the effects of their behavior reducing the moral strain such as shifting responsibility to the victim which helps them feel in control and see that they are merely agents, an example is the participants knowing it was wrong to deliver shocks but felt like they had to obey the experimenter.
What is the dispositional explanation for obedience
Adorno (1950) proposed a dispositional explanation of obedience, the dispositional explanation claims that a persons characteristics determine their behavior not their environment.
An authoritarian personality is more likely to obey authority figures and they often have traits such as : preoccupied with power, conformist, dogmatic, hostile to people of lower status and servile to people of higher status.
He thought people who experienced harsh discipline as children where more likely to have an authoritarian personality.
He created a questionnaire to measure this called the f scale .
strengths of dispositional explanation of authority
There is research support to suggest people who are more obedient to authority have a more authoritarian personality as measured by the f scale.
Elms and Milgram did a follow up study which looked at 20 obedient and 20 disobedient participants and no difference was found between the groups in a personality test and the f scale.
The groups did not have different personality but the obedient group on average scored higher on the f scale.
weaknesses of dispositional explanation of authority
The explanation is limited as for example it does explain whole populations such as Germany obey authority since they don’t all have authoritarian personalities.
The methodology is flawed, the f scale questionnaire has questions all worded in the same direction making it easier to get a high score. The questions are all closed and many of the questions are children of their time so the f scale may not be relevant today.
Also while he did interview the participants about their childhood he already knew their f score by then so he may have shown bias.
