Psychology AS: Social Influence Revision

Explanations For Obedience

Obedience: A form of social influence in which a person yields to explicit instructions/orders from an authority figure.

The Agentic State:

The Autonomous State is where a person sees themselves as being fully responsible for their actions and the consequences.

The Agentic State is where a person views themselves as an agent of an authority figure therefore they don't see themselves as responsible for their actions. They attribute the responsibility of  their actions to a figure of authority.

The change from the autonomous state to the agentic state is called the 'Agentic Shift'.

Legitimate Authority:

The first condition needed for a shift to the agentic state is for an individual to perceive someone as a legitimate authority figure:

-Refers to the amount of social power held by the person who gives an order.

-Powers may become associated with social roles or status.

From early childhood we are taught that it is only acceptable if we obey people who have authority over us. We may obey because we trust them or because we are fearful that they have the power to hurt/harm us.

Evaluation of the Agentic State

A strength of the Agentic State is that there is evidence to support it. In Milgrams's study* there was video footage of the original study that shows participants asking who was responsible if anything happened to the 'learner'. When assured that the experimenter would take full responsibility, the participants continued to administer electric shocks to the learner because they had shifted to the agentic state and do not feel responsible for the consequences of their actions therefore this increases the validity of the theory of the agentic state.

Another strength is that there are real life examples to support the agentic state. For example, American soldiers who tortured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib argued that they were only following orders and should not be punished for their crimes. Similarly, Nazis soldiers at the Nuremberg trials also felt they were not responsible because they were just carrying out orders. These examples provide strong evidence that people do shift from the autonomous state to the agentic state when given an order from a legitimate figure of authority and the agentic shift allows the to carry out immoral actions without accepting any responsibility.

However, many people believe that the 'obedience alibi' is unjustified and disrespectful. Mandel argues that the suggestion that Holocaust perpetrators were 'just obeying orders' is distressing for all those people whose lives were affected by the Holocaust. Such an explanation does not take free will into account and effectively exonerates war criminals of their crime therefore people will believe that they are not responsible for their crimes and will go unpunished.

*Milgram's study is explained below.

Key Study: Milgram (1964)

Aim:  To investigate whether ordinary people would obey an unjust order from an authority figure.

Procedure:

-40 white Americans between the ages of 20-50 were recruited via a newspaper ad that told them that they were taking part in a study to investigate the effects of punishment on learning.