AS level social psychology topic 1
also for A level paper 1
Obedience: Agency Theory, Social Impact Theory
Prejudice: Social Identity Theory, Realistic Conflict Theory
Classic Study: Sherif et al (1954/1961)
Contemporary Study: Burger (2009)
Research methods for social
Obedience - A form of social influence in which an individual follows a direct order. The person issuing the
order is usually a figure of authority who has the power to punish when obedience behaviour is not
forthcoming
Autonomous State - A mindset where we behave independently, make our own decisions about how to
behave and take responsibility for the consequences of our actions
Agentic State - A mindset that allows us to carry out orders from an authority figure, even if they conflict with
our personal sense of right and wrong
Agentic Shift - The switch between the autonomous state and agentic state that occurs when we perceive
someone to be a legitimate source of authority and allow them to control our behaviour
Blind Obedience - When people, regardless of whether they believe what they are doing is morally, ethically,
or legally right, do what they are told
Moral Strain - A state of mental discomfort or anxiety experienced in the agentic state when a person’s
actions conflict with their personal morality
- Stanley Milgram (1974) said that obedience to authority is necessary for the smooth running of
society
- Humans live in hierarchically organised social groups and in order for these groups to function
successfully, subordinate (lower in rank/position) individuals sometimes have to suppress their
personal desires in order to carry out the wishes of their superiors
- Milgram (1974) maintained ‘we are born with a potential for obedience, which then interacts with the
influence of society to create the obedient man’
- Milgram suggested that we have two mindsets or states that enable us to operate on our own and
with others - the autonomous and agentic states
- Agency theory suggests that we have an innate potential for obedience, which implies that everyone
should be the same (Nature)
- However, obedience is shaped by experiences such as differing parenting styles and educational
experiences. These experiences may explain individual differences in obedience rates (Nurture)
The Autonomous State
- In this state, our behaviour is ‘self-directed’
- We are at liberty to choose how to behave
- We take greater responsibility for the consequences of our actions and we will be more likely to
exercise our personal understanding of right and wrong
- We operate in this state when we are on our own, with peers or with people who we perceive to be
below us in the social hierarchy
The Agentic Shift
- Authority is legitimate when there is a consensus that a person has the right to give orders and to
enforce obedience
- When confronted with a legitimate authority figure, we change from our normal autonomous state to
the agentic state
- This is called the agentic shift
The Agentic State
- In this state, we become the ‘agent’ of the authority figure, meaning that we believe that we are
acting on their behalf and that responsibility for our actions lies with them
- We may follow the orders of the authority figure feeling that we have no choice but to obey and this
may lead us to do things that we might not normally choose to do
- Milgram believes that this agentic state is what leads people to commit acts of destructive obedience
Moral Strain
- In this state, people may experience symptoms of anxiety, especially when obeying orders that result
in harm and Milgram called this moral strain
, - For example, if we believe that harming people is wrong, yet we also know that our actions have
resulted in harm, these two conflicting ideas lead to cognitive dissonance, a state of mental conflict
that leads to moral strain
Blind Obedience
- Blind obedience occurs when we comply with the order of an authority figure without question
- Obedience is not necessarily a bad thing
- Maintain social order by complying with orders e.g. wearing a school uniform, stopping at a red light
- However some obedience can be considered bad because it may harm another person - destructive
obedience
Why do we obey?
- Human nature – dispositional
- Experience teaches us that authorities are generally trustworthy
- Do as you’re told
- Personality/ Upbringing
- Assume people have more knowledge or expertise
- Don’t see consequences of actions
- People dislike confrontation
- Scared of consequences
- Rules
Milgram maintained that when binding factors outweigh moral strain, obedience follows
Evaluation of Agency Theory
Credibility
- It’s supported by Milgram’s 1963 baseline study
- In this study he found that 100% of participants would administer a shock of 300v to a confederate
as a punishment for making a mistake on a word learning task and 65% would go right up to the final
450v, beyond the shock labelled ‘danger’, extreme shock’
- This clearly supports Milgram’s suggestion that in the face of legitimate authority people are highly
likely to carry out orders, despite high levels of moral strain
Objections
- Gina Perry (2012) questioned the internal validity of this evidence saying that the participants saw
through the deception
- She examined recently released evidence from the Yale University archives of his study which
reveals that many participants questioned whether the shocks were real
- This new evidence shows that across all of Milgram’s variation studies more than 60% of participants
disobeyed the experimenter
- This reinterpretation of Milgram’s data leaves agency theory in question
- The agentic shift does not appear to be inevitable
- Steven Rank and Cardell Jacobson’s (1977) study with nurses found that 16 out of 18 (89%) nurses
failed to obey orders from a doctor who asked them to administer an overdose of the drug Valium
- This shows that despite the doctors being an obvious source of authority, the vast majority of the
sample remained autonomous
- This qualitative data demonstrates that the nurses did consider themselves responsible for their
actions
Differences
- A different approach is Social Impact Theory. SIT suggests lots of other pressures that make a
person obey besides the authority figure’s status
- Agency theory says obeying is automatic but SIT says it depends on whether the authority figures
outnumber the followers
,Application
- Milgram maintained that when binding factors outweigh moral strain, obedience follows
- This principle has been applied in a variety of military strategies devised to ensure soldiers follow
orders without question by reducing moral strain
- One example is the use of euphemisms such as ‘collateral damage’ and dehumanising language
used to refer to the enemy
- This shows how an authority figure’s communication can minimise moral strain, ensuring that
soldiers remain in the agentic state, even when ordered to commit barbarous acts
Conclusion
It would appear that while Milgram provided extensive well-controlled experiments to explore destructive
obedience, his theory is perhaps oversimplified and overstated. The agentic state is not inevitable and
therefore it would be more beneficial to society to examine the factors that lead people to resist destructive
obedience, allowing them to think more independently and take greater conscious control of their actions.
Milgram Baseline 1963
Aims of the original study
To investigate how far people will be prepared to go in obeying an authority figure and to understand the
behaviour of the Germans who followed orders to kill over 10 million people in the Holocaust. The “Germans
are Different” hypothesis:
- Germans have an authoritarian personality
- Hostile to people of a lower status
- Being servile to those of a higher status
- Uphold the norms of society and are intolerant of anything different
Sample
40 men aged 20 to 50 from a range of occupations volunteering to take part in a study of “learning and
memory” at Yale University
Procedure
- Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception).
Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to
professional
- At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a
confederate of the experimenter
- They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the
confederate always ended up being the learner
- There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a white lab coat, played by an actor
- The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair in another room with electrodes
- After he has learned a list of word pairs given to him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a
word and asking the learner to recall its pair from a list of 4 possible choices
- The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake,
increasing the level of shock each time
- There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger,
severe shock)
- The teacher was told that the shocks may be painful but would not be harmful (no lasting tissue
damage)
- The teacher could hear the learner’s response in the baseline, but could not see them
- The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an
electric shock
- When the teacher refused to administer a shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, he
was given the standard instruction /order (consisting of 4 prods):
- Prod 1: please continue
- Prod 2: the experiment requires you to continue
, - Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue
- Prod 4: you have no other choice but to continue
Results
- 100% obedience to 300v - when the learner started to protest
- 65% obedience to the full 450V
- Qualitative data was also collected - observations of the participants e.g. extreme tension, sweating,
trembling, stuttering, 3 had full blown seizures
Conclusion
Ordinary Americans are astonishingly obedient to authority when asked to behave in an inhumane way. It is
not necessarily evil people who commit evil crimes but ordinary people who are just obeying orders. Crimes
against humanity may be the outcome of situational rather than dispositional factors. An individual's capacity
for making independent decisions is suspended under certain situational constraints - namely, being given an
order by an authority figure
Evaluation of Milgram
Generalisability
- A sample of 40 is quite large, but anomalies (unusually cruel, gullible or timid people) might spoil the
results
- Androcentric - the original sample was all-male, which cannot generalise to women
- Ethnocentric - all-American, may not generalise to other cultures
- It may be “time-locked” in the early 1960s
- Several cross-cultural variations on Milgram’s study have been conducted
- All of them also show high levels of obedience, but the exact numbers vary and they often used
different sorts of tests:
- Meeus & Raaijmakers (1986) found 92% obedience in the Netherlands, but they used insults
rather than electric shocks
- Burger (2009) produced similar results to Milgram (70%). However, he only ordered
participants to go up to 150v
Reliability
- Milgram’s procedure is very reliable because it can be replicated
- He carried out 19 Variations of his baseline study
- Burger (2009) replicated aspects of Variation #5 (heart condition to test for empathy) and Variation
#17 (model refusal) as well as Variation #8 (testing women)
- Burger followed Milgram’s script wherever possible, indicating high reliability.
- Milgram also filmed parts of his study, allowing viewers to review his findings (inter-rater reliability)
- Features that make for standardised procedure in this study include the pre-scripted “prods” used by
the Experimenter, the tape-recorded responses from Mr Wallace and the fact that the Teacher
cannot see Mr Wallace (so there will be no differences in how he looks between each test)
- A serious criticism is levelled by Gina Perry (2012), that Milgram did not follow standardised
procedures
- John Williams (the Experimenter) admitted to Perry that Milgram was only strict about the
pre-scripted “prods” in the first study and afterwards Williams was free to improvise
- This made obedience in the variations seem higher than it really was
Application
- The study demonstrates how obedience to authority works and this can be used to increase
obedience in settings like schools, workplaces and prisons
- Authority figures should wear symbols of authority (uniforms) and justify their authority
- Milgram (1974) links his findings to the Mai Lai massacre
- In 1968, a group of US soldiers (“Charlie Company”) killed the 800 inhabitants of a Vietnamese
village. They were obeying the orders of Lt William Calley
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