4. Situational explanations

• Milgram's interest in obedience - AO1


  - Sparked by the war crimes committed in the Nazi death camps during the second world war.

  - Many officers believed that they were only obeying orders.
• Agentic state - AO1


  - A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure, i.e. as their agent.

  - This frees us from the demands of our consciences and allows us to obey even a destructive authority figure.
• Autonomous state - AO1


  - A state where a person is independent and free to behave according to their own principles and feel a sense of responsibility for their own actions.
• Binding factors - AO1


  - Explains why participants remain in the agentic state

  - Aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise damaging effects to or their behaviour thus reduce their 'moral strain'.
• Legitimacy of authority - AO1


  - 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 within a social hierarchy.
• Destructive authority


  - Problems arise when legitimate authority become destructive.

  - History has often shown that people can use legitimate power for destructive purposes e.g. Hitler and Stalin.
• Research support for agentic state - AO3


  - Milgram's own study supports the role of the agentic state in obedience.

  - When giving the participants shocks some resisted/hesitated

  - They asked the experimenter Who is responsible if Mr Wallace gets hurt" and the Experimenter replied "I'm responsible".

  - They would often go through the procedure with no further objections.

  - Once participants believed they were no longer responsible for their own behaviour they acted easily.
• A limited explanation - AO3


  - The agentic state doesn't explain many researchers findings about obedience.

  - Rank and Cardwell (1977) found that 16 out of 18 nurses objected to the doctors orders to administer an drug dose to a patient.

  - Even though the doctor was an obvious authority figure

  - The agentic state can only account for some explanations of obedience.
• Legitimacy of authority explains cultural differences - AO3


  - A useful account of cultural differences in obedience.

  - A study found that only 16% of female's Australian participants went up to 450 volts in a replica of Milgram's study.

  - However, A german study found that it was 85%.

  - In some cultures authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate.