Explanations for Obedience Flashcards
What are the 2 explanations for obedience?
Agentic State and Legitimacy of Authority
What is Agentic State?
This is when someone believes someone else will take responsibility for their actions
What is autonomous state?
The state which a person believes they’ll take responsibility for their own actions
What is agengtic shift?
When someone shifts from autonomous state to agentic state
What is the Agency Theory?
The idea that people are more likely to obey when in agentic state as they won’t feel the consequences
What is legitimacy of authority?
Describes how credible the figure of authority is. People are more likely to obey if the person is seen to be moral. This is why students tend to obey teachers and parents. Milgram found that people saw the experimenter as legitimate as they knew he was a scientist
What are the 3 situational factors?
Uniform, location and proximity
Explain uniform
Wearing uniform gives someone a higher status and greater sense of legitimacy. It was found obedience was much higher when the experimenter was in a lab coat in comparison to normal clothes
Explain Location
A person is more likely to obey in a location linked to higher status. Milgram study was carried out in Stanford Uni so obedience was greater compared to a variation carried out in a rundown area
Explain Proximity
Someone is more likely to obey the close someone is. In milligrams study the experimenter was in the same room obedience was 62.5% and when the experimenter was in a different room it was 20%
Give a - of Explanations of Obedience (SWR)
Some say the participants didn’t acknowledge the shocks were real. Quantitive data gathered by Milgram suggested 70% of participants believed shocks were real
Give a + of Explanations of Obedience. (RLA)
Has real life application towards destructive authority figures. Like when soldiers obey orders from their generals and so shifted responsibility to them. Authority was justified due to their high position in the army ranks. Suggesting both theories are valid
Give a - of Explanations of Obedience (UOSF)
Removal of uniform may have lacked validity. Milgram admitted the use of a normal citizen instead might have been too obvious. Therefore decreased obedience may have been because the participants behave accordingly to their expectations and so the results were affected by demand characteristics
