social psychology

• obedience- where an individual gives up their free will and hands it over to an authority figure by doing what they say evem if they do not believe what they are doing is correct
• autonomous state

  • free to choose how to behave
  • take responsibility for the consequences of our actions
  • operate autonomously when on our own
• agentic state

  • happens in the presence of an authority figure
  • acting on behalf of the authority figure
  • surrender free will and give them responsibility
• agentic shift - the shift between the autonomous and agentic state that occurs when we percieve someone to be a legitimate authority figure and allow them to control our behaviour

  -we become the agent of the authority figure

  -we obey the orders of the authority figure and do things we might not normally choose to do
• moral strain-symptoms of anxiety that develop especially when obeying orders that result in harm
• Milgram study

  Aim -to see whether people would obey and inflict harm on each person using electric shocks by following the orders of an authority figure

  - this was to see whether all individuals had the potential to cause harm like the Nazis
• Milgram study

  Procedure:

  • a volunteer sample was recruited by placing an advert in the newspaper offering a $4,00 reward
  • 40 male pps took part and were introduced to who they believed to be another pp
• procedure

  • 40 male pps took part and were introduced to who they believed to be another pp
• procedure

  • in a rigged draw the pp was allocated the role of teacher
• procedure

  • pps were shown to a room with the shock generator and given a test shock at 45v to create realism
  • the shock generator was marked up to 450v
• procedure

  • pps were asked to read word pairs to the learner and had 4 options to choose from
• procedure

  • at 150v the pps heard the learner ( a recording) say 'ouch that hurts' and at 300v refused to answer and became silent
• procedure

  • if pps wanted to stop they were prompted to continue such as 'please continue' and 'the experiment requires you to continue'
  • the experiment ended if the pp reached 450v or asked to stop after asking 5 times
• findings

  • 65% of pps gave shocks to 450v
  • all pps gave shocks to 300v
• conclusion

  • people will obey an authority figure even hwen this causes harm to another individual
• generalisability

  • as only male pps were used and it took place in america the findings cannot be generalised to other cultures and women
  • however when the study was repeated with female pps the same finding of 65% was found
• reliability

  • it was a controlled procedure as it took place in a lab setting
  • milgram ensured a standardised procedure was followed with set prompts and same tape recording
  • this makes the experiment reliable as the experiment can be repeated and measured for consistency
  • the experiment was repeated for each of the 40pps and milgram went on to use this procedure n other variations
• application

  • study can be applied to the Nazis
  • they were like the pps in the agentic state and saw hitler as the authority figure
• validity

  • the experiment required pps to give shocks to another person
  • this is not something people do in everyday life so lacks ecological validity
  • pps may have guessed the experiment was not real and shown demand characteristics
• validity

  • they may have given the shocks because they thought that was what milgram wanted
  • however when asked in a follow up survey pps said thye did believe it was real
• ethics

  • this experiment could not be be repeated today due to the ethical issues that were broken
  • in this experiment pps were not protected from harm and incredibly distressed as they believed they killed another person
  • they were also decieved as they were not told the true aim of the experiment and did not give informed consent
• ethics

  • due to the prompts such as 'the experiment requires you to continue' it was difficult for pps to have the right to withdraw
  • however 35% did leave so it could be argued the right was given
  • in the follow up survey the majority (84%) said they were glad to have taken part
  • suggesting that although ethic may have been broken the research was seen as beneficial
• social impact theory- Latané developed social impact theory to describe how we behave within social forcefields all impacting on each other through on going interactions
• source-person doing the influencing
• target-people who are influenced
• formula

  impact on target=F(SIN)
• strength-percieved power or authority of the source

  -strength can be affected by socioeconomic status,age and

  the nature of any past or future relationship with the target
• immediacy-closeness of the source and the target

  -physical or psychological barriers to communication affect immediacy
• number-how many sources are present during the interaction
• Divisional effect-social impact is reduced if there are more targets than there are sources

  (impact is divided by number of targets so the impact on each person is reduced)
• The agency theory was made by Milgram and stated that everyone has two mindsets that enable us to operate on our own and with others.
• The autonomous state is when a person directs their own behaviour and takes responsibility for the consequences.
• The agentic state is when a person allows someone else to direct their behaviour and assumes responsibility passes to that person.
• The agentic state leads people to commit acts of destructive obedience such as the Nazis to Hitler or in the army where the soldiers do not take responsibility for their actions and instead pass it to whoever is ordering them to commit the acts.
• Moral Strain is when people become uncomfortable with their behavior as their behaviour is wrong and goes against their values for example the participants in milgrams, experiment.
• A strength of Milgram's agency theory is that it is supported by his own research. In which he found that 100% of pps would shock someone 300V and 65% of people went up to the max 450V. This is important

  as it supports Milgram's suggestion that in the face of legitimate authority people are likely to obey, despite high levels of moral strain.
• However. some psychologists such as Perry questioned the internal validity as participants saw through the deception and some questioned whether the shocks were real or not. New evidence suggests that across all milgram variations more than 60% of ps disobeyed the experimenter at least once leaving the agency theory in question.
• Another weakness of the theory is that the agentic shift does not appear to be inevitable. Rank and Jacobson's study found 16/18 nurses failed to obey orders from a doctor asking them to administer a drug

  overdose. Despite the doctors being an obvious source of authority most nurses disobeyed as they consider themselves as responsible for their own actions and are in the autonomous state.
• On the other hand, a strength is that the theory has been applied to a variety of military strategies to ensure soldiers follow orders without question and reduces moral strain. They dehumanise language

  when referring to the enemy to make them not feel bad about their actions. This can ensure soldiers remain in the agentic state, even when commiting horrible acts such as torture.
• In conclusion, it would appear Milgram's provided reliable studies to explore factors affecting obedience although his theory is in some ways oversimplified and overstated. The agentic state is not inevitable and it would be more beneficial to society to examine factors leading to destructive obedience.