Explanations for Obedience

• What is Agentic State?


  A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure
• What is an Autonomous State?


  When a person is free to act independently and feel a sense of responsibility for their own actions
• What are binding factors?

  Aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore the the damaging effects of their behaviour and reduce the moral strain they feel
• AO3 Agentic State: Research Support

  • Milgram's studies support the role of the agentic state in obedience.
  • PPs resisted giving the shocks at some point and asked questions like ‘Who is responsible if Mr Wallace (the Learner) is harmed?’
  • When the Experimenter replied ‘I’m responsible’ PPs went through the procedure with no further objections.
  • This shows that once PPs perceived they were no longer responsible for their own behaviour they acted more easily as the Experimenter’s agent
• AO3 Agentic State: Limited Explanation

  • Agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience
  • One study found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient
  • The doctor was an obvious authority figure but almost all the nurses remained autonomous as did many of Milgram’s PPs
  • The agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience
• AO3 Agentic State- Research Support

  Blass and Schmitt - showed students a film of Milgram's study, asked to identify who was responsible for the learners harm and they said experimenter
• What is Legitimacy of Authority?


  An explanation for obedience which suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us. This authority is justified by the individual's position of power
• What is Destructive Authority?


  Use legitimate powers for destructive purposes. Like Hitler. An example is in Milgram when the experimenter used prods to show authority
• AO3 Legitimacy of Authority: Explains cultural differences

  • Many studies show that different countries in the degree to which people are obedient
  • 16% of Australian women went up to 450 volts in a Milgram style study but this differed to Germans with 85% obeying
  • Different countries value authority figures more and raise their children differently in terms of how they perceive authority figures
• AO3 Legitimacy of Authority: Does not explain all obedience

  • LOA does not explain cases of disobedience
  • 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient (The doctor was the authority figure)
  • In Milgram's study some PPs disobeyed the experimenter
  • Some people obey or disobey more than others
• Dispositional Explanations: The Authoritarian Personality

  • Adorno wanted to understand anti-Semitism of the Holocaust
  • They came to believe that a high level of obedience was a psychological disorder so tried to locate causes
• Origins of Authoritarian Personality

  • Typically forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting
  • Parents are extremely strict, expect loyalty, impossibly high standards, severe criticism
  • Conditional love - parents love based on how child behaves which creates resentment and hostility in child but can't express feelings directly due to fear of punishment
  • Therefore feelings are displaced onto others seen as weaker and inferior
• Adorno's procedure

  • Investigated causes of obedient personality using 2000 middle class white Americans and studying their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
  • Developed the F-scale
• Adorno's findings

  • People who scored high on the F-scale acted superior to those who are inferior
  • They were also conscious of status and showed extreme respect to those in higher status
  • They saw things in black and white and had stereotypes about different groups
  • There is a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• Dispositional Explanations AO3: Research Support

  • Milgram interviewed a small sample of fully obedient PPs who scored highly on F-scale, believing there may be a link between obedience and authoritarian personality
  • Obedient people may show similar characteristics to people who have AP
• Dispositional Explanation AO3: Counterpoint to research support

  • When researchers analysed individual F-scales they found that PPs had unusual characteristics
  • They didn't glorify their fathers and did not experience unusual levels of punishment
  • This is merely a correlation, and it is impossible to draw this conclusion and we cannot establish cause and effect
  • There may be a third factor involved, such as having a lower level of education, and may not be directly linked at all
• Dispositional Explanations AO3: Limited Explanation

  • The explanation of obedience cannot be generalised to a whole country and is unable to show that everyone has an authoritarian personality
  • In pre war Germany many people displayed obedient and racist behaviour but their personalities may have differed
  • Another explanation may be better such as social identity theory where you identify with something so you obey
• Dispositional Explanation AO3: Flawed Evidence

  • F-Scale has provided the basis of an explanation of obedience based on Authoritarian Personality
  • But some say the methodological issues of the F-Scale make it really flawed
  • You can easily get a high score by selecting 'agree' answers so anyone that has response bias will have an AP