Agentic State + Legitimacy Of Authority

Question 1

Research support for Milligram’s explanation of obedience in terms of legitimate of authority + the agentic state

Answer 1

E - Blass and Schmidt (2001) showed students a film of the Milgram experiment + then interviewed them. Students usually said they held the experimenter, not the participant responsible for the shocks due to his authority as a scientist

E - Findings support both features of M’s explanation. 1stly participants identified the experimenter’s authority as arising from his role as a scientist, findings is in line with M’s argument that people derive their status as legitimate authority due to shared cultural assumptions. In this case it was that scientists have authority in science experiments. 2ndly participants held the experimenter > themselves responsible suggests they recognised the agentic shift occurred =ing participants had enter the agentic state + were no longer responsible for their actions

L - Therefore study provides support for M’s explanation of obedience in terms of legitimacy of authority + the agentic state

Question 2

Criticism of M’s explanation of obedience in terms of legitimacy of authority + the agentic state is that it offers a deterministic account of obedience

Answer 2

E - M’s explanation for destructive obedience presents a deterministic account as it implies a person will automatically enter the agentic state + obey an order if their cultural background leads them to view the authority giving the order as legitimate

E - one reason this is problematic = it undermines the fundamental beliefs shared by most people that human have free will. This sense of free will is missing from M’s explanation. This deterministic explanation seems incomplete. Many individuals disobey destructive orders ( evident in M’s study + the Holocaust). M’s explanation of obedience in terms of entering the agentic state after receiving an order from a legitimate authority doesn’t appear to account for this;

L - Therefore M’s explanation of obedience, through the agentic state + legitimacy of authority could be criticised for being overly deterministic

Question 3

Research support for the legitimacy of authority as an explanation for obedience

Answer 3

E - Replications of M’s study have produced inconsistent results: obedience in M’s US study of 65% differs from 16% in an Australian replication & 85% in a German replication

E - M’s concept of legitimacy of authority can help explain these variations as participants from these different cultures may have had differ shared assumptions about the extent to which an experimenter had legitimate authority to issue destructive orders.

L - Study’s findings provided support for legitimacy of authority as an explanation for obedience

Question 4

M’s concept of the agentic state + legitimacy of authority may provide a limited explanation for obedience

Answer 4

E - M & Elms (1966) measured the personality traits of 20 fully obedient + 20 disobedient participants from the M study. Found obedient participants were more likely to have an authoritarian personality

E - Findings suggest that a person’s personality plays a role in why people obey/disobey. M’s concept of agentic state + legitimacy of authority ignore the role of a person’s disposition & instead focus only on interpersonal factors, suggesting his explanation of obedience is limited