Obdience

• Obedience


  Following the orders of an authority figure
• Milgram's agency theory of obedience


  Agency-the responsibility we feel for our own actions
• Agentic state


  When we believe we are acting on behalf of an authority so we feel no accountability for our actions
• Autonomous state


  Where we feel responsible for our own actions and free to choose how we believe
• Agentic shift


  Moving from an autonomous to agentic state
• We are trained to shift from childhood as we are trained to respect and follow command of authority figures in society
• Blind obedience can result from the normalisation of shifting from an autonomous to agentic state
• Soldiers that have committed war crimes seem to have been in an agentic state, e.g. Nazi guards at concentration camps have said they were just following orders and the blame lies in the hands of the authority which gave them the order
• In Milgram's study of obedience, 65% of participants were prepared to give a potentially fatal electrical shock when an authority figure told them to do so
• Milgram said the participants were in an agentic state as they were told the experimenter would take accountability for their actions
• If told they were responsible for their own actions, it would be likely that fewer participants would have followed the actions they were given
• Milgram's theory only focuses on social factors affecting obedience but research has shown that dispositional factors such as personality are also important in how obedient people are
• Authority


  • We are brought up to respect authority figures and so we obey them without thinking about it as that's what society expects us to do
  • We are more likely to follow orders given by people we believe have authority over us as we trust they will have a higher level of expertise or they have the power and status to punish us if we don't obey
  • Uniforms are associated with authority and have been shown to increase levels of obedience
• Proximity


  How far away something is
• Culture


  • Collectivistic cultures place greater importance on group values and respecting authority so there is a higher level of conformity
  • Individualistic cultures place value on independence and freedom
  • Not all research has found higher levels of obedience in collectivistic cultures than individualistic
• Being in closer proximity to authority

  Increases conformity
• Proximity to the consequences of our actions


  Affects obedience levels as we do not have to see the reaction
• Being distanced from the consequences of our actions


  Makes it easier to follow orders
• Dispositional factors affecting the rate of obedience


  • Whether a person is obedient or not is sometimes due to their personality rather than the situation they are in
• People who disobeyed the experimenter


  • They were confident and articulate so they could explain why they decided to not give people shocks
• Authoritarian personality


  A type of personality that makes some people more obedient than others due to their childhood experiences
• Adorno's theory of the authoritarian personality


  1. Interviewed 2000 American students about their childhood

  2. Found those who had a strict upbringing were obedient as adults

  3. Concluded these children grew up to be obedient as adults
• Adorno developed the F-scale questionnaire to measure attitude and behavior
• People who score highly on the F-scale are said to have an Authoritarian personality
• Adorno only found a correlation between personality and obedience, so he could not prove that Authoritarian personality causes obedience
• Some of the most obedient people in Milgram's study did not have an authoritarian childhood that Adorno predicted
• People with higher educational needs are shown to be more obedient than those who are highly educated
• This suggests that other dispositional roles e.g. intelligence may play a role in levels of obedience