SITUATIONAL EXPLANATIONS

• What are the two situational explanations for obedience?

  agentic state

  legitimacy of authority
• What is agentic state?


  mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour as we are acting for an authority figure, we are freed from consequence
• what is autonomous state?


  person who behaves according to their own principles and feels responsible for their actions
• what is agentic shift?

  the shift from autonomous state to agentic state
• what are binding factors?

  aspects of situation that allow the person to ignore/minimise the damaging effects of their behaviour and reducing the moral strain
• What is legitimacy of authority?

  we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us, justified by the individuals position of power
• why is the power that authorities wield legitimate?

  it is agreed by society, most accept that authority figures have power over others
• strength of agentic state

  research support, most of Milgrams participants asked who was responsible for any harm, the experimenter said “I am responsible“ and participants carried on without objecting
• limitation of agentic state

  agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings. Rank and Jacobson found that most nurses disobeyed a doctors order to give an excessive drug dose, the nurses remained autonomous and didn’t shift into an agentic state
• strength of legitimacy of authority

  can explain cultural differences - research shows different countries differ in obedience to authority. for example 16% of Australian women obeyed in a study whereas 85% of German participants obeyed
• limitation of legitimacy of authority

  can’t explain all (dis)obedience. people may disobey even in a hierarchal structure. Rank and Jacobsons nurses were disobedient to the Dr