Essay
Explanations of obedience - A03 ONLY
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- Social Influence
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- AQA
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Outline and evaluate one or one explanations of obedience (16 Marks)A03:
Some of the participants in Milgram’s study did not obey (as humans we are social animals with
social hierarchies therefore should obey), because not all went up to the full 450 volts. This is a
problem because we would have expected the participants to obey as they would have gone
through an agentic shift to an agentic state due to the responsibility going to the researcher. Also, it
cannot explain Hofling’s findings as they did not experience high anxiety. The theory suggests that
going from an autonomous state to the agentic state involves experiencing high anxiety. However,
the nurses didn’t experience anxiety despite them acting as an agent for the doctor and being in an
agentic state, therefore this contradicts the theory.
One limitation is that it cannot explain some obedience findings, e.g., Rank and Jacobson (1977)
found that 16/18 nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer and excessive drug does to a
patient. The doctor is an obvious authority figure, but they remained autonomous. In this situation,
we would think the nurses would obey because the doctor is a higher authority figure. Therefore,
they would have gone through an agentic shift to an agentic state giving responsibility to the doctor.
This challenges the theory as an explanation of obedience.
One strength of legitimate authority as an explanation for obedience is that it is a useful account of
cultural differences in obedience. For example, Kilham and Mann (1974) replicated Milgram’s
research in Australia and found only 16% of participants went up to full voltage, whereas Mantell
(1971) found that with German participants the obedience level was 85%. It could be suggested that
in some cultures authority may be more likely to be accepted as legitimate. It may reflect different
structure of society and how children are raised to perceive authority. Supportive findings from
cross-cultural research increases the validity of the explanation of legitimate authority.
One limitation of legitimacy of authority is that it cannot explain instances of disobedience in a
hierarchy where the legitimacy of authority is clear and accepted. For example, Rank and Jacobson
where the nurses were disobedient, despite being in a hierarchical structure. Also, a minority of
Milgram’s participants disobeyed despite recognising the experimenter’s scientific authority. This
goes against legitimacy of authority as we would expect them to obey if there was legitimate
authority. Therefore, it could be an innate tendency to disobey such as personality so legitimacy of
authority cannot be the only explanation of obedience.
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