obedience: social-psychological factors

• what are the two explanations in terms of social-psychological factors for obedience?

  • agentic state and legitimacy of authority.
• • an agentic state occurs when we act on behalf of another person
  • milgram proposed that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person becomes an 'agent'- someone who acts for or in place of another.
  • in an agentic state a person feels no personal responsibility for their actions.
• what is the opposite of an agentic state?

  • an autonomous state.
• the opposite of an agentic state is an autonomous state

  • 'autonomy' means to be independent or free. so a person in an autonomous state behaves according to their own principles and feels responsible for their own actions.
• agentic shift occurs when a person defers to the authority figure

  • the shift from autonomy to being an 'agent' is called the agentic shift. milgram suggested that this occurs when we perceive someone else an authority figure. this person has power because of their position in a social hierarchy.
• • binding factors reduce the 'moral strain' of obeying immoral orders
  • 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 the victims
• LOA (legitimacy of authority): we obey people at the top of a social hierarchy

  • most societies are structured hierarchically. people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us. parents, teachers, police officers, nightclub bouncers, all have some kind of authority over us at times.
• LOA (legitimacy of authority): authorities have legitimacy through society's agreement

  • the authority they wield is legitimate in the sense that it is agreed by society. most of us accept that authority figures should exercise social power over others because this allows society to function smoothly.
• LOA (legitimacy of authority): we hand control of our behaviour over to authority figures due to truth and through upbringing

  • one consequence of legitimate authority is that some people are granted the power to punish others. we give up some of our independence to people we trust to exercise their authority appropriately. we learned to accept authority during childhood from parents and teachers.
• LOA: charismatic leaders use their legitimate powers for destructive purposes

  • history has shown too often that leaders (e.g. hitler, Stalin) use legitimate authority destructively, ordering people to behave in callous, cruel, dangerous and stupid ways.
• strength of the agentic state: research support:

  • blass and Schmidt showed students a film of milgram's study and asked them to identify who was responsible for harm to the learner. students blamed the 'experimenter' rather than the participant. this responsibility was due to legitimate authority (the 'experimenter' was top of the hierarchy) but also to expert authority (he was a scientist). the students recognised legitimate authority as the cause of obedience, supporting this explanation.
• limitation of the agentic state: cannot account for the behaviour of the nazis:


  • mandel described German reserve police battalion 101- men shot civilians in a small town in Poland (WW2). they did this even though they were not directly ordered to (they were told they could be assigned other duties). this challenges the agentic state explanation because the reserve police were not powerless to disobey.
• strength of legitimacy of authority: can explain real-life obedience:

  • kelman and hamilton suggest the my lai massacre (Vietnam war) is explained by the power hierarchy of the US army. the army has authority recognised by the us government and the law. soldiers assume orders given by the hierarchy to be legal; even orders to kill, rape and destroy villages. the legitimacy of authority explanation is able to give reasons why destructive obedience is committed.