Obedience: Social-psychological factors

Milgram's initial intrest in obedience was sparked by the trial of Adolf Eichmann for war crimes.

Eichmann had been incharge of the Nazis death camps and his defence was that he was obeying orders.

This led to Migram  to propose that obedience to destructive authority occurs because a person does not take responsablity. Instead they believe they are acting on someone elses authority (an 'agent'). 

AGENT- someone who acts for or inplace of another.

An agent is not an unfeeling puppet- they experience high anxiety ('moral strain') when they realsie that what they are doing is wrong, but they feel powerless to disobey. 

The opposite of being in an agentic state is being in an autonomous state.

Autonomy- to be independant or free.

So if a person is in an autonomous state they are free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsiblity for their own actions.

The shift from autonomy to 'agency' is called the agentic shift. Milgram (1974) suggested that this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of hierarchy. 

Hierarchy of needs: a 5-levelled hierarchical sequence in which basic needs (such as hunger) must be satisfied before higher psychological needs (such as esteem and self-actualism) can be achieved.

In most social groups when one person is in charge, others defer to this person and shift from autonomy to agency.

Milgram then raised the QU of why the individual remains in the agentic state. Milgram has observed that many of his participants spoke as if they wanted to quit but seemed unable to do so. Answer- binding factors. 

BINDING FACTORS- aspects of the situation that allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour and thus reduce the 'moral strain' they are feeling. 

EG:

Milgram proposed a number of strategies that the individual uses, such as shifting the responsibility to the victim or denying the damage they were doing to the victims.  

Most societies are stuctured in a hierarchial way. This means that people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us. 

E.g. parents, teachers, police, nightclub bouncers- some kind of authority over us at times. The authority they wield is legitmate in the sense that it is agreed by society. 

Most of us accept that authority figures have to be allowed to exercise social power over us- allows society to function smoothly. 

One of the consequences of legitimace of authority is that some people are granted the power to punish people. 

Most of us accept that the police and courts have the power to punish wrongdoers. So we are willing to give up some of our independence and to hand control of our behaviour over to people we trust. 

We learn acceptance of legitimate authority from childhood- from parents initally and then teaachers and adults generally.

Problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive. 

Powerful leader- Hitler.  used his legitimate powers for destructive purposes, ordering people to behave in ways that are cruel, dangerous and stupid. 

Destructive authority was very clearly on show in Milgram's study, when the experimenter used prods to order participants to behave in ways that went against their consciences.