Situational explanations

• Agentic state

  Mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure.
• Autonomous state

  Mental state where we are free to behave according to our own principles and feel a sense of responsibility for our own actions
• Agentic shift

  Shift from autonomy to agency

  Occurs when a person perceives someone else as an authority figure.
• authority figure

  Someone who has greater power due to their higher position in a social hierarchy
• binding factors

  aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour.

  Allows them to remain in the agentic state.
• Strength - research support for agentic state

  Milgram's studies

  Most participants resisted giving shocks at some point and asked the Experimenter a question like 'who is responsible if the Learner is harmed?'

  If the Experimenter replied saying 'I am responsible' then the participants went through with the procedure with no further objections.

  They no longer perceive responsibility as their own.
• Limitation - agentic shift is a limited explanation

  Doesn't explain many research findings about obedience.

  Rank + Jacobson's study

  Found 16/18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient.

  Doctor was an obvious authority figure but almost all nurses remained autonomous.

  Suggests agentic shift can only account for some situations.
• Legitimacy of authority

  Explanation for obedience which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us.

  Authority is justified by individual's position in social hierarchy.

  A consequence is people are given power ot punish others.
• Destructive authority

  Problems occur when legitimate authority becomes destructive.

  Leaders can use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes such as ordering people to behave in cruel and dangerous ways.

  Destructive authority was obvious in Milgram's study.
• Strength of LoA - explains cultural differences

  Studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient.

  Kilham and Mann

  • 16% of Australian women went up to 450 volts

  Mantell

  • 85% of German participants went up to 450 volts.

  Shows authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate than others.
• Limitation of LoA - cannot explain all disobedience

  Rank + Jacobson's study.

  Most nurses disobedient despite obvious hierarchical authority structure.

  Significant minority of Milgram's participants disobeyed.

  Suggests some people are more/less obedient than others.