Milgram's situational variables affecting obedience

• What is the legitimate authority explanation of obedience?

  Authority figure = anyone who has a legitimate status to issue orders. Society has taught us that we live in a social hierarchy and to recognise our place within it. An individual is much more likely to obey someone who they perceive to be an authority figure than someone who appears to be of a lower status.
• What is the agentic state?

  Milgram proposed that we have 2 states: agentic and autonomous. In the autonomous state, we are independent and behave according to our morals/take responsibility for our actions. In the agentic state, we act on behalf of authority and feel no personal responsibility for our actions. An agent will experience high anxiety when they realise that what they are doing is wrong, but feel powerless to disobey. Milgram suggested participants stayed in the agentic state due to binding factors that allow them to ignore/minimise the damage being done.
• What is graduated commitment?

  Milgram said that if you start small when obeying an authority figure, then it becomes easier to obey and do things that you wouldn't have done otherwise. Once an individual has committed to an action, then it's difficult to know when to draw the line and start to disobey. E.g. in Milgram's study, participants had already 'shocked' Mr Wallace and caused him harm, why not go up another 15 volts?
• Evaluation of the Milgram's explanations of obedience:

  • Strong external validity - examples of agentic state can be seen in terrible acts committed throughout history e.g. the Holocaust in Nazi Germany
  • Blass and Schmitt showed video of Milgram's study to students and asked them to identify who they thought was responsible for the harm to Mr Wallace. They blamed the experimenter rather than the participant, stating that he had the responsibility due to his authority
  • Cannot explain why some people do not obey
  • Deterministic - suggests people don't have free will/autonomous state