situational explanation (social-psychological)

• Milgram presented an explanation of obedience called legitimacy of authority in 1974
• The legitimacy of authority explanation says because we grow up in social hierarchies, we learn from a young age to obey people who are higher up in the social hierarchy.
• The conflict someone feels when they feel like they need to obey the authority figure, but don’t want to be responsible for the bad consequences, is known as moral strain
• Milgram also came up with agency theory as an explanation of obedience
• Agency theory states that when people obey orders of a legitimate authority figure, they make an agentic shift and place the responsibility of the consequences of their actions on to the authority figure.
• The agentic shift is when someone shifts from an autonomous state to an agentic state.
•  The agentic shift allows people to obey legitimate authority figures even when the orders are destructive or bad.
• The authoritarian personality was presented by Adorno in 1950
• An authoritarian personality is a personality type that is characterised by a strong sense of social obligation and a strong desire to obey authority
• Authoritarian personality theory

  People are more likely to obey due to their authoritarian personality, which makes them strict, aggressive, and overly respectful of authority.
• As a consequence of this authoritative personality, these people fear and respect authority figures and punish people of lower social status.
• An authoritarian personality comes from overly-strict upbringing
• The F-scale measures tendency towards facism, thought to be the essence of the authoritarian personality.