Explanations for Obedience (AQA A Level Psychology)

Agentic state

• Stanley Milgram is one of the most well-known psychology researchers worldwide due to his groundbreaking study of obedience

• Milgram’s (1963) work on obedience drew from the idea that people will obey an authority figure if specific situational factors are present, even to the point of harming a stranger who has done them no wrong (known as destructive obedience)

• In brief, Milgram's study is as follows:

  • A sample of American males were recruited (they were naive to the true aim of the study)

  • In the role of 'Teacher', each participant administered electric shocks (which were fake, although the participants did not know this) to the 'Learner' for every incorrect answer given

  • An experimenter provided 'prods' to encourage the participants to continue if they raised any objection to the procedure

  • 65% of the participants went all the way to the (fatal) 450 volts

• Milgram’s study was based on the concept of agency theory

  • When an individual is in an agentic state they feel removed from their actions

    • ‘I was just obeying orders’

• Examples of the agentic state include:

  • Opening fire on unarmed civilians because your commander issued the order to do so

    • The My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War is a good example of extreme violence perpetrated against unarmed villagers by armed soldiers who were told to attack by their captain

  • Reporting your colleague for making personal calls during office hours as part of your workplace’s directive to identify time-wasters

  • Ignoring one of your friends because the most popular and powerful person in your group told you to do so

• In all of the above examples the individuals who perpetrate the harm can claim deniability and pass any blame onto the person who issued the order

• The agentic state allows people to minimise responsibility and guilt about their (negative) actions because they are acting under someone else’s command

  • The consequences of their actions cannot be held to blame themselves

    • ‘Not my fault; not my decision; not my problem’

• The agentic state is made possible by the presence of a legitimate authority figure who has the status/position to issue demands or orders

• Social hierarchies stand or fall according to whether people adhere to the norms expected of them in society

  • The further up the hierarchy someone is, the more they would expect obedience (or at least compliance) from those lower down

  • Obeying the orders of someone further up the hierarchy means that personal responsibility for actions can be shifted onto them

  • Being part of a social hierarchy is a binding factor that may contribute to destructive obedience

    • Milgram's study imposed a moral strain on the participants, so being able to shift responsibility for the shocks to the experimenter allowed them to ease the burden of guilt/shame

Legitimacy of authority

• An authority figure is anyone who has a legitimate status to issue orders

  • ‘Legitimate’ could be considered in official terms, e.g. police officer, or unofficially, e.g. school bully

• If an individual perceives someone to be an authority figure then they are much more likely to obey orders from them than from someone who appears to lack status or authority

• As outlined above it is necessary to some extent for social hierarchies to exist

  • Someone has to be in control and decide how things are run in an office, school, business, country etc.

  • If no one obeyed and everyone rebelled then (possibly) chaos would follow

• For most people, it is a relief to let someone else take charge as this reduces cognitive load and frees up their time to get on with more enjoyable (or mundane) tasks

• Research by Bickman (1974) showed that:

  • People were more likely to obey a confederate dressed as a security guard than when the confederate was dressed as a milkman or in plain clothes

  • The plain clothes condition resulted in the lowest levels of obedience

  • Hence, a uniform confers authority, even when it is not a police uniform

• Being in charge can be stressful as it brings with it much responsibility but (as seen in Zimbardo's prison experiment) power can corrupt and lead to destructive obedience

• Lack of obedience may result in punishment or the withdrawal of social approval which is another binding factor

  • If someone in authority tells you to do something then you had better do it or risk the consequences

  • It's often easier to simply obey rather than to question the motivation behind the order

Evaluation of explanations for obedience

Strengths

• Agency theory has strong external validity

  • Examples of agentic state and destructive obedience to an authority figure can be seen in acts of atrocity throughout history, e.g.

    • the holocaust in Nazi Germany was only made possible by thousands of ordinary people obeying horrific orders and directives from above

    • the Rwandan genocide turned neighbour against neighbour with destructive, propagandist orders transmitted by a popular radio show

• Legitimacy of authority has been supported by research evidence

  • Blass & Schmitt (2001) showed a film of Milgram's original obedience study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner

  • The students blamed the experimenter rather than the participant, stating that it was the experimenter was both the legitimate authority and the expert authority (i.e. a scientist).

    • The above finding shows that the legitimacy of authority is a valid concept when discussing destructive obedience

Limitations

• Agency theory cannot explain why some people do not obey, even when they would be justified in blaming someone else for their actions

  • Thus, the theory only offers a situational explanation of obedience rather than a dispositional explanation of obedience

• Both of these explanations for obedience are deterministic

  • They imply that those who commit acts of destructive obedience have no control over their actions

    • The above observation negates the idea of people as autonomous and able to exercise free will