AQA A Level Psychology复习笔记1.2.1 Explanations for Obedience

• Obedience means to comply with the demands of someone you see as an authority figure

The agentic shift

• When orders come from a figure of authority we can easily deny personal responsibility because it is assumed that they will take ultimate responsibility
• When this happens, we become ‘agents’ of an external authority
• Milgram claims obedience occurs due to 2 opposing sets of demands:
  • The external authority: Authority of the authority figure
  • The internal authority: Authority of our own conscience
• The agentic shift is when the fully obedient person undergoes a psychological adjustment or ‘shift’ and they see themselves as an agent of external authority

The presence of an authority figure

• An important factor in obedience is legitimate authority:
  • This refers to the amount of social power held by the authority figure
• Most human (and indeed animal) societies are ordered in a hierarchical way, where some members of the group have legitimate social power above those beneath them in the hierarchy
• We are taught early by socialisation in the family and at school that we will be accepted if we obey those who have authority over us. Two reasons we may obey people with legitimate authority are because we trust them or because they have the power to punish us

Situational Explanations look at the dynamics of social hierarchies

Agentic state

• Milgram's interest in obedience originally was ignited by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, who was being trailed for War Crimes
• He had been in charge of the Nazi Death camps and Eichmann's defence was that he was obeying orders
• This led Milgram to look at Agentic State as an explanation of obedience;  where an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure, acting as their agent
• The shift from autonomy to ‘agency’ is referred to as the ‘agentic shift' and this allows the individual to take no personal responsibility for the actions
• Autonomous State:
  • An autonomous state is the opposite of an agentic state and means the person has autonomy over their actions and can act according to their own principles
• Binding Factors:
  • During Milgram's experiment, he observed that many participants said they wanted to stop but seemed powerless to do so
  • Milgram said this was due to them staying in an agentic state through binding factors
  • Binding factors are when aspects of the situation mean the individual is able to take away their own 'moral strain' and ignore their damaging behaviour

Legitimacy of authority

• The Hierarchy of most societies means that there are people who are in certain positions that hold legitimate authority in their positions, such as police officers, teachers, doctors etc
• It is legitimate as it has been agreed by society that these positions carry power and most people accept this
• Authority figures need to be allowed to exercise power over others as this allows society to continue to function in an orderly fashion
• Destructive authority:
  • This is when legitimate authority becomes destructive, such as Hitler, Stalin etc
  • This is when power is used  for destructive purposes
  • In Milgram's experiment, the experimenter displayed destructive authority when they were prodding and encouraging the teacher, making the participants go against their own moral judgement. potentially kill another human being

Evaluation

• The agentic shift cannot explain why some participants in Milgram’s study did not obey, as, in theory, they should all have been in an agentic state
• Therefore, this cannot explain all obedience or obedience over long periods of time (such as in Nazi Germany)
• Blass and Schmitt (2001) asked observers to explain who they thought was responsible for the harm caused to the learner in Milgram’s study
• Most thought the experimenter was responsible, so supporting the agentic state explanation
• The legitimacy of authority is supported by cultural differences
• In countries where obedience and deference to authority are less valued (such as Australia), obedience rates are much lower than in countries that value legitimate authority figures (such as Germany)
• This again suggests that legitimacy of authority plays a part in obedience