Situational explanations

• agentic state

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

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

  = free to behave according to their own principles and feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions
• agentic shift

  = shift from autonomy to agency

  • milgram suggested that this occurs when a person perceives someone else as an authority figure
  • the authority figure has greater power because they have a higher position in a social hierarchy
• Binding factors

  = Milgram wondered why participants wanted to stop but seemed powerless to do so.

  • aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and therefore reducing the moral strain they feel.
  • strategies that individuals use is shifting the responsibility to the victim
• Legitimacy of authority

  = suggests that we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us

  • this authority is justified by the individuals position within a social hierarchy
  • consequences= people are granted the power to punish others
  • so we give up some of our independence and hand over control of our behaviour to people we trust
• destructive authority

  = history often shows how powerful leaders can use their legitimate power for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel and dangerous
• Evaluation- research support for agentic state

  -Milgram’s own studies support role of agentic state

  • most participants resisted giving shocks at some point and often asked the experimenter who is responsible
  • shows that once participants perceived they were no longer responsible for their own behaviour they acted more easily as the experimenters agent
• Evaluation- limited explanation for agentic shift

  = doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience

  • eg: Rank and Jacobson’s study found that 16/18 nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to patients
  • doctor was an obvious authority figure but almost all the nurses remained autonomous
  • suggest the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.
• Evaluation- explains cultural differences, legitimacy explanation

  -many countries differ in the degree to which people are obedient to authority

  • Kilham and Mann found that only 16% of female Australian participants went all the way up to 450 volts
  • however Mantell found a different figure for German participants- 85%
  • shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals
• Evaluation- can’t explain all obedience

  Limitation= can’t explain instances of disobedience in a hierarchy where the legitimacy of authority is clear and accepted.

  • nurses in Rank and Jacobson study, most where disobedient despite working in a rigidly hierarchical structure.
  • a significant number of milgrams participants disobeyed despite recognising the experimenters scientific authority
  • suggests some people may be more or less obedient than others