Agentic state and Legitimacy of authority

Question 1

What are the two social psychological factors that may explain obedience?

Answer 1

1) Agentic state
2) Legitimacy of authority

Question 2

What is the agentic state?

Answer 2

Where a person sees themselves as an agent, fulfilling another persons wishes. They feel responsible to the authority figures demands, not their own actions

Question 3

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 3

Where a person sees themselves as responsible for their own actions

Question 4

What is agentic shift?

Answer 4

As the two states are not static, people may experience shift where they can move from autonomous to agentic state

Question 5

What did Milgram say about agentic shift?

Answer 5

When person perceives someone else as an authority figure. The other person has greater power because of their position in social hierarchy

Question 6

Self image and agentic state

Answer 6

• less obedient if damaging to self-image
• in agentic state, concern is not relevant, action is no longer their responsibility (shocking people - they are being told to do it)

Question 7

What are binding factors?

Answer 7

Social etiquette that plays part in regulating our behaviour
- in order to break off experiment they must breach the commitment made to the experimenter
- if they break off they fear they will be seen as rude/arrogant
- emotions help bind the subject into obedience

Question 8

What may people experience in agentic state?

Answer 8

Moral strain

Question 9

What is moral strain?

Answer 9

state of mental discomfort/anxiety experienced in the agentic state when a persons actions conflicts with their personal morality

Question 10

What is legitimacy of authority?

Answer 10

someone who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation

Question 11

What is the first condition needed for a person to shift into the agentic state?

Answer 11

Legitimacy of authority

Question 12

Explain legitimacy of authority

Answer 12

• Society structured in a hierarchal way, some people have more authority over us
• legitimacy of authority only applied to certain contexts/situations e.g. nightclub bouncer

Question 13

Legitimacy of authority in Milgram’s study?

Answer 13

• Ppts enter the lab with an expectation of someone in charge, the experimenter fills out this role

Question 14

Why does legitimacy of authority require an insitiution?

Answer 14

If authority figures demands are potentially harmful, for them to perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure (uni/military)

Question 15

What might legitimacy of authority also be indicated by?

Answer 15

• by institution (location)
• if authority figures demands are potentially harmful or dangerous for them to be seen as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure (e.g. military, university)

Question 16

A03 - strength for legitimacy of authority is that there is research evidence

Answer 16

• Legitimacy of authority has been supported by research evidence
• Blass & Schmitt (2001) showed a film of Milgram’s original obedience 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, stating that it was the experimenter was both the legitimate authority and the expert authority (i.e. a scientist).
• The above finding shows that the legitimacy of authority is a valid concept when discussing destructive obedience

Question 17

A03 - However, agentic state does not explain many of the research findings

Answer 17

• Milgram’s claim that people shift between agentic state and autonomous state cannot explain the gradual and irreversible transition that Lifton found in his study of German doctors in Auschwitz
• Lifton found that these doctors changed gradually and irreversibly from ordinary medical professionals, who cared about the well-being of their patients, into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on helpless prisoners
• Staub suggests that rather than agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many Holocaust perpetrators, it is the experience of carrying out vile acts over a long time that changes the way an individual thinks and behaves

Question 18

A03 - The legitimacy of authority and real life obedience

Answer 18

• Although there are positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority (e.g. responding to a police officer during an emergency) it can also serve as the basis for justifying the harming of others
• If people authorise another persona to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel their moral values are relevant to their conduct
• As a result, when directed by a legitimate authority to carry out immoral actions, people are willing to do so
• As a result of this people may readily engage in unquestioning obedience to authority, no matter how destructive or immoral the actions called for