Social-psychological explanations of obedience:

Agentic State

An agentic state is when an individual carries out the orders of an authority figure and acts as their agent, with little personal responsibility. In Milgram’s original experiment, the participants were told that the experimenter had full responsibility and therefore they could act as an agent, carrying out the experimenter’s orders. If the participants were told that they were responsible, it is possible that Milgram would have obtained very different results.

Milgram believed that we operate on two levels:

1. As autonomous individuals, conscientious and aware of the consequences of our behaviour.
2. As agentic individuals seeing ourselves as the puppets of others and no longer responsible for our actions.

Milgram argued that people operate in one of two ways when faced with social situations. Individuals can act autonomously and choose their behaviour, or they can enter an agentic state, where they carry out orders of an authority figure and do not feel responsible for their actions. When a person changes from autonomous state to an agentic state, they have undergone an agentic shift.

Normally we behave as autonomous, but under certain circumstances we undergo agentic shift and move to the agentic level.  They are then responsible only to the person giving the orders and their responsibility to others disappears.  He believed this explained the behaviour of participants in his own studies, with the experimenter being in charge during the agentic state.  It would also explain the behaviour of people like Eichmann who could switch from ordinary, dull uninspired etc., to mastermind of the final solution.

Milgram believed this shift was possible because of a combination of obedience to authority, buffers that prevent an appreciation of consequences and graduated commitment that blurs the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable requests by others.

Once in an agentic state Milgram believes binding factors prevent us leaving easily.  These help us justify our behaviour or allow it to be rationalised.  For example in his procedure, the participants may blame Mr Wallace for his predicament, claiming he volunteered, he deserves what he gets.Buffers: Acts to protect person from the consequences of their behaviour.  In Milgram’s study putting the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ in different rooms so there was no eye contact and the consequences were distant.  Dropping bombs from 5 miles up is easier than shooting someone face to face!  The airmen who dropped the first atomic bomb were not told the nature of the mission.  On seeing the mushroom cloud they reported ‘conditions novel.’

Evaluation:

• Research to support: In Milgram’s original experiment 65% of participants administered the full 450 volts and were arguably in an agentic state. However, in one variation of Milgram’s experiment and additional confederate administered the electric shocks on behalf of the teacher. In this variation the percentage of participants who administered the full 450 volts rose dramatically, from 65% to 92.5%. This variation highlights the power of shifting responsibility (agentic shift), as these participants were able to shift their responsibility onto the person administering the electric shocks and continue obeying orders because they felt less responsible. Therefore, the ability to enter an agentic state increases the level of obedience, as the level of personal responsibility decreases.
• Deterministic explanation: Not all participants delivered electric shocks in the Milgram study. He found that 65% obeyed to the full 450 volts, where as 35% refused to continue. This shows that the participants had some ability to think for themselves and show that they were autonomous when faced with the authority figure. This casts doubt on the theory of agentic state, this is because it underestimates the capacity of free will and individual differences.
• Alternative explanation: It may be that people can choose to disobey, or maybe they have a certain characteristic that makes them more disobedient e.g. Adorno’s theory (low scores on the F scale indicate a more liberal approach to authority) Therefore, the agentic state theory cannot be used to explain all instances of obedience. On the hand, all participants did obey up to 300 volts, which would cause some serious harm if the study were real! This supports the idea that people can move from the autonomous state into the agentic state, and then back into the autonomous state again.
• Methodological issues: You can use the strengths and weaknesses of Milgram’s research to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the theory. For example, Milgram’s study was an unrealistic situation in relation to everyday obedience such as a student following the orders of a school teacher. Therefore, this research may be limited in explaining everyday obedience because it uses an extreme example to support the agentic state theory.

Legitimacy of authority 

Milgram’s variations investigating location and uniform highlight an important factor in obedience research – legitimate authority. For a person to obey an instruction they need to believe that the authority is legitimate and this can be affected by multiple variables.

In Milgram’s original research, which took place at Yale University, the percentage of participants administering the full 450 volts was high (65%). However, when the experiment took place in a run down building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, obedience levels dropped significantly (48%). This change in location reduced the legitimacy of the authority, as participants were less likely to trust the experiment. In addition, when the experimenter in Milgram’s research was replaced by another participant, in ordinary clothes, the obedience levels dropped even further (20%). The lack of a uniform and questionable position of authority reduced the credibility of the authority, which meant the participants were far less likely to obey.

Society gives power or authority to certain people that they are able to exercise over others.  Obvious examples include the police.  Many examples are situation specific, for examples teachers (supposedly) have authority in schools, traffic wardens in parking areas, doctors over their patients etc.  Hofling (1966) and Bickman (1974) are examples of this.  Respect for authority, like this, clearly has its advantages in allowing for the smooth running of a society, and its rules are hammered home in all of us from a very early age.  The danger comes when we blindly obey such figures and as a result behave in an immoral way.  This would help to explain some of the differences found in levels of obedience between different countries.  Some countries such as Australia have a history of questioning authority whereas countries like Germany teach their children from an early age to respect authority.

Evaluation:

• Research to support: Blass & Schmidt (2001) found support for the idea of agentic state and legitimacy of authority.  They showed video footage of the Milgram experiment to a collection of students and asked them who was to blame for the behaviour of the teachers.  Most believed the experimenter to be to blame since he was the one with legitimate authority in this situation, but also due to the fact that he was an expert (a trusted scientist. Therefore they were passing the blame onto the authority figure, and they believed that this was because he was believed to be a legitimate authority figure. This supports the credibility of the social-psychological theories of obedience.
• Research to support in different cultures: Kilham and Mann (1974)  A strength of the legitimacy of authority explanation is that it is a useful account of cultural differences in obedience. Many studies show that countries differ in the degree to which people are traditionally obedient to authority. For example, Kilham and Mann (1974) replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found that only 16% of their participants went all the way to the top of the voltage scale. On the other hand, other research has found a very different figure for German participants – 85%. This shows that in some cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals. This reflects the ways that different societies are structured and how children are raised to perceive authority figures. Such supportive findings from cross-cultural research increase the credibility of the explanation

• Methodological issues: You can use the strengths and weaknesses of Milgram’s research to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the theory.