Explanations for Obedience
- Created by: zara.mathur
- Created on: 25-11-19 20:02
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- Explanations for Obedience
- Legitimacy of Authority
- AO1
- More likely to obey people who we perceive as having authority over us
- Generally accept that authority figures can punish others because we trust them
- Most societies are structured hierarchically
- People in certain positions hold authority over others
- We accept it because it maintains order within society
- Justify someone's authority by looking at their position within society
- Their position in society makes us likely to obey the orders of certain individuals
- AO3
- Research support: Blass and Schmidtt (2001)
- Showed footage from Milgram's experiment to students and asked them to identify who was responsible for any harm
- Students stated the experimenter was to blame - had most responsibility:being at top of hierarchy
- Cultural Differences
- Authority figures will be accepted as legitimate depending on structure of society and how well children are raised to perceive authority figures
- Cross cultural research shows obedience rates vary
- Milgram's study was replicated in Australia (16% obedience) and Germany (85% obedience)
- Explains real-life war crimes eg Nazis
- Soldier's stated they were fulfilling their duty by following orders
- Demonstrates that they saw authority figures as legitimate so believed they were right
- Soldier's stated they were fulfilling their duty by following orders
- Research support: Blass and Schmidtt (2001)
- AO1
- Agentic State
- AO1
- We obey because we don't take responsibility for our own actions
- If we believe we're acting for someone else - more likely to obey
- Acting as an agent for them
- Doesn't mean we don't feel anxious about what we're doing, but feel as if we cannot disobey authority
- Opposite of being in the 'autonomous' state
- Feel that we're acting independently and so behave according to own individual morals
- Autonomous to agentic = agentic shift
- Milgram believed the shift occurs because we believe someone else has greater power
- Binding factors are specific aspects of a situation that help an individulal stay in the agentic state
- Allow the person to ignore the effects of their behaviour
- AO3
- Cannot explain Nazi behaviour (Mandel)
- Recalled an incident where German police were not asked to shoot civillians yet they did
- Cannot explain Nazi behaviour (Mandel)
- AO1
- Legitimacy of Authority
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