obedience - situational explanations

• situational explanations (psycho social roles):

  • relationship, the situation itself
• situational explanations of dynamics of social hierarchies:

  • agentic state
  • legitimate authority
• agentic state:

  • person doesnt take accountability, instead acting for someone else
  • agent is not a puppet -experience high moral strain but powerless to disobey
• autonomous state:

  • free to behave according to own principles
• agentic shift:

  • from autonomous to agentic
  • occurs when person perceives someone as authority figure
  • based on social hierarchy
• binding factors:

  • aspects of situation that allow person to minimise or ignore damaging effects of behaviour - lowers moral strain
• milgram's binding factors:

  • shifting responsibility to victims
  • denying damage done to victims
• legitimacy of authority:

  • more likely to obey someone who we perceive has authority over us - authority justified by position of power in social hierarchy
  • most societies structured in hierarchical way - allows society to function smoothly
• destructive authority:

  • legitimate authority becomes destructive
• my lai massacre:

  • vietnam war, 504 unarmed civilians killed by us soldiers
  • lt william calley faced charges - defence = duty following orders, showed moral strain
• EVALUATION: research support for agentic state

  • Blass + Schmidt - watched original footage + suggested who was responsible, experimenter = top of hierarchy, legitimate authority
  • participants who resisted shocks asked who was responsible - experimenter said they were, continued with procedure
  • support for role of agentic state + legitimate authority figure determining obedience
• EVALUATION: limited explanation

  • contradictory evidence (Rank + Jacobson) - 16/18 nurses disobeyed doctors to administer excessive dose to patient
  • doctor = authority, nurses = autonomous, milgram = large amount disobeyed despite authority
  • agentic shift + legitimate authority only account for some situations - dispositional factors may have larger role
• EVALUATION: explains cultural differences

  • legitimacy explanation = useful account of cultural differences, studies show countries differ in degree to which people are obedient to authority
  • kilhaim + mann - 16% female australians went to 450V, Mantall - 85% for germans
  • some cultures = authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate - reflects different society structures + how people are raised to perceive authority