Legitimacy Of Authority For Obedience AO3

• My Lai Massacre


  When 504 unarmed civilians were killed by US soldiers who believed they had been given orders to fire on all inhabitants in the area
• In the army, the officer who ranks above you

  Has legitimacy of authority
• Not all research supports the idea that army crimes of obedience are easier to understand in terms of a clear power hierarchy where punishment occurs if orders aren't followed
• Dispositional obedience


  An alternative explanation to situational obedience, where people with an authoritarian personality and strict upbringing are more likely to see their place in a structure and be obedient to authority
• Kilham and Mann found only 16% of Australian women were fully obedient in a Milgram-type study, whereas Mantell found 85% obedience in Germans, suggesting cultural differences in attitudes towards obedience to authority
• It is very difficult to measure why people obey, so the evidence for or against the legitimacy of authority explanation is not really conclusive