obedience - situational explanations

• agentic state 


  obedience to destructive auth occurs because person doesn’t take responsibility

  • believes acting on behalf as agent, feels moral strain but powerless to disobey
  • autonomous state is opposite and free to behave according to own principles - agentic shift, occurs because perceive someone else as powerful due to higher social hierarchy (milgram )
  • binding factors things that remain in agentic state and minimise damaging effect of behaviour eg victim deserved it
• legitimacy of authority 


  more likely to obey people we perceive have authority, and auth is justified (legit) by individuals position of power in social hierarchy

  • eg police teachers, higher, agreed by society and accept they have power to exercise social power over others as allows society to function smoothly, learned to accept this in childhood
  • consequence is people granted power to punish others, we give up independence and hand control over to trusted authority to exercise power appropriately
  • can become destructive eg experimenter in milgram to cause harm or hitler and stalin
• strength of agentic state

  research support

  • Milgram - most resisted shocks at some point and often asked qs like who is responsible, when E said him, they carried on procedure with no objections
  • once perceived not responsible, acted as agent
• limitation of agentic state

  cannot explain all findings, limited

  • Rank and Jacobson, 16/18 nurses disobeyed order from doctor to administer excessive dose, doctor authority figure but most nurses remained autonomous despite his higher power
  • so did many of milgrams ppt
  • agentic shift cannot account for all situations of obedience
• strength of LOA


  explains cultural differences

  • studies show countries differ in degree to which people obey authority
  • Mann - 16% australian women went to 450v but 85% in germans in diff study
  • reflects the way diffferent cultures are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority
• limitation of LOA


  cannot explain all findings

  • rank and jacobson, doctors clearly power figure in hospital hierarchy with LOA yet still disobeyed
  • Milgram- disobedience even when E had authority