Explanations of Obedience

• What is the agentic state?

  Seeing oneself as an authority figure's agent
• What is the autonomous state?

  Acting on one's own principles
• What is the agentic shift?

  Moving from autonomous to agentic state
• What is the role of binding factors in the agentic state?

  Reducing moral strain to stay compliant
• How is legitimacy of authority often justified?

  By social hierarchies
• What symbol reinforced authority in Milgram's study?

  A lab coat
• How does Milgram’s study support explanations of obedience?

  Participants obeyed due to agentic state, experimenter's legitimacy
• What are the weaknesses of Milgram’s study regarding ecological validity?

  Lacks mundane realism and ecological validity
• According to Adorno, what causes obedience?

  Personality, not the situation
• According to Adorno, what shapes the Authoritarian Personality?

  Strict upbringing and harsh discipline
• What are the characteristics of an Authoritarian Personality?

  • Respect for authority figures
  • Hostility towards lower-status groups
  • Fixed stereotypes
  • Conventional beliefs
• What did Adorno use to measure authoritarian traits?

  The F-Scale
• What did the F-Scale find?

  High scorers identified with strong leaders
• How does the dispositional explanation address the limitations of Milgram's study?

  Explains why some resisted obedience
• What did Elms & Milgram find about obedient participants?

  They scored higher on the F-Scale
• What is a weakness of the dispositional explanation based on correlational evidence?

  Cause and effect aren't clear
• What is acquiescence bias in the F-Scale?

  Agreeing inflates scores
• What is a political bias of the F-Scale?

  It leans against right-wing views