explanations

• Agentic state

  • move from being in a state where they take personal responsibility for their actions to a state where they believe they are acting on behalf of an authority figure
  • lose sense of personal responsibility
  • more likely to obey
• Legitimacy of authority figure

  • individuals accept the power and status of authority figures e.g. police officers
  • accept people's credentials and believe they know what they are doing
  • Ingrained in us to obey - even when we believe the order may be unethical or unjust
• A03

  • Research to support legitimacy of authority – Milgram
  • when he changed the location of his obedience study from Yale university to a seedy office,
  • obedience dropped as the authority figure lost status and credentials
  • supporting legitimacy of authority as an explanation of obedience.
• AO3

  • Gender bias – only male participants
  • difficult to generalise the findings to females
  • some psychologists suggest they may have higher levels of obedience and would obey more
  • limiting the validity of explanations of obedience.