Explanations for obedience

• Obedience


  When a person changes their attitudes or behaviour due to explicit orders from another individual. It usually occurs within a hierarchy, where the person giving the order has power or authority.
• Dispositional explanation for obedience - Authoritarian Personality


  Adorno identified the authoritarian personality as a cluster of personality traits that makes it more likely for a person to obey. Their shared traits are:

  • Highly conventional - views on society, the family, sexuality, education etc and have right-wing political beliefs.
  • Aggressive and Hostile - especially towards those of a lower status, minority group and those who choose unconventional lifestyles.
  • Unquestioning respect for authority - belief in the importance of power, more likely to obey.
• Authoritarian personality cause


  According to Adorno, this personality is caused by experiencing harsh parenting as a child, including abuse. This causes the unquestioning respect for authority and created the anger.
• Strength of authoritarian personality

  • convincing research to support it - Elms and Milgram - most obedient participants in Milgram's original experiment scored more highly on the F-scale - shows that obedience is most likely in people who have an authoritarian personality - however, there is a difference between having strict parents and an authoritarian personality.
• Limitation of F-scale

  • can only establish a correlation - not possible to conclude that have having an authoritarian personality causes high levels of obedience - Other factors such as education could be an important factor
  • low internal validity - does not measure what it intended - F-scale may measure tendency to agree - results do not accurately measure authoritarianism
• Social-psychological explanation - agentic state


  People are more likely to obey when they enter the agentic state, where they see themselves as an agent of the authority figure, working on their behalf. As a result, they give up their free will because they believe that they are not responsible for their own actions.
• Strength of Agentic state

  • Convincing evidence to support it - Milgram - interviewed participants after his experiment and found they didn't feel responsible for their actions because they believed they were working on the experimenter's behalf - obedience is most likely when people enter the agentic state.
• Social-psychological explanation - Legitimacy of the authority figure


  People are more likely to obey if the person giving orders has a high level of legitimate authority. This is because the social role of the authority increases their social influence, which people respect because they fear punishment if they do not obey.
• Strength of Legitimacy of the authority figure

  • explain real life obedience - Kelman and Hamilton suggested that the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam war can be explained by this. - suggests that legitimacy of authority figure is a valid explanation of obedience.
• Situational explanation - Uniform

  People are more likely to obey if the authority figure is wearing a uniform. This is because a uniform is a symbol of authority, which increases the authority figures social influence.
• Strength of Uniform

  • Convincing research evidence to support it - Bickman - 92% of pedestrians obeyed an order to give a stranger money for a parking ticket when a confederate dressed as a guard told them to - shows that obedience is most likely when the uniform of the authority figure increases their social influence.
• Situational explanation - Location

  People are more likely to obey in high status locations, with high levels of perceived authority. This is because the high status of the setting adds to the authority figure, increasing obedience.
• Strength of Location

  • convincing research to support it - Milgram - only 47.5% of participants obeyed orders to give maximum shock in run-down office building rather than at Yale - shows obedience is most likely when orders are given in a prestigious location.
• Situational explanation - Proximity of the authority figure

  People are more likely to obey if they authority figure is proximate. This is because the proximity of the authority figure makes them close enough to exert their authority.
• Strength of Proximity of the authority figure

  • convincing research to support it - Milgram - who found that only 20.5% of participants obeyed orders when the experimenter gave instructions via a telephone - This shows that obedience is most likely when the authority figure is close.