obedience: situational explanations

• Milgram proposed that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person becomes a ‘agent’, someone who acts for in place of another. In an agentic state, a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions. The shift from autonomy to being an agent is called the agentic shift. Milgram suggested that this occurs when we perceive someone else as an authority figure. This person has power because of their position in a social hierarchy
• Binding factors are aspects of a situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and reduce the ‘moral strain’ they feel. Milgram proposed a number of strategies the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they are doing to victims
• Most societies are structed hierarchically. People in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us. The power that authorities wield is legitimate because it is agreed by soicety. People with legitimate authority have the power to punish others and we learn to accept authority during childhood
• One strength of agentic state is that it has research support. Most of Milgram’s participant asked the experimenter ‘who is responsible if Mr Wallace (the learner) is harmed?‘ When the experimenter replied ‘I’m responsible’ the participants went through the procedure quickly without objecting. This shows participants acted more easily as an agent when they believed they were not responsible for their behaviour
• One limitation of the agentic shift is that it doesn’t explain many research findings. For example, Rank and Jacobson found that most nurses disobeyed a doctor’s orders to give an excessive drug dose. The doctor was an authority figure but the nurses remained autonomous and did not shift into an agentic state. The same is true for some of Milgram’s participants. This shows that agentic shift can only explain obedience in some situations
• One strength is legitimacy can explain cultural differences. Research shows that countries differ in obedience to authority. For example, 16% of Australian women obeyed, 85% of German participants did. This shows that authority is more likely seen as legitimate in some cultures, reflecting upbringing
• One limitation is legitimacy cannot explain all disobedience/obedience. People may disobey even when they accept the legitimacy of the hierarchical authority structure. For example, most of Rank and Jacobson’s nurses were disobedient, as were some of Milgram’s participants. This suggests that innate tendencies towards obedience may be more important than legitimacy of authority