Discuss two explanations for obedience.

One explanation for obedience is the agentic state.
This is the idea that people have a shift from an autonomous state (taking responsibility for your actions) to an agentic state (passing on the guilt and blame of actions onto someone else.) This would mean by doing something wrong, you are not guilty because you were asked to do so by authority.
Evidence for this came from interviews conducted after Milgram's study. The participants said the only reason for administering the shocks was that they were doing as they were told.
This suggests that the participants had no freewill in the situation to do what they believed was right, making it entirely experimentally determinist. This means that the human behaviour shown is oversimplified and may not be appropriate for generalisation.

An explanation for agentic state is to keep a good self-image.
Because the guilt is taken away or passed onto an authority figure, it leads to not taking responsibility for their actions, and therefore keeping a good self image.
However, there has been questions about whether agentic state really occurs, and this allows the person to keep a good self image, or whether it is just cruelty.
Evidence for this comes from Zimbardo's prison study, as the guards had no obvious authority figure, yet were still inflicting torture and emotional pain on the prisoners.
This suggests agentic state may not be…

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