Social Influence

~ Explanations for obedience ~

Agency theory – autonomous state we show free will make our own decisions and our own choices. Agentic state following instructions from someone perceive has legitimate authority. 

Autonomous state = being responsible for your own actions. – ‘Autonomy’ be independent or free. Individual behaves according to their own principle. (Milgram 1974) agentic shift = the movement from autonomous state to agentic state. 

Binding factors = when the individual remains in agentic state and when/if they want to quit they are unable to do so. 

ü Legitimacy of authority – to obey authority the obeying person should accept that it is rightful for the command to be made for them.     

ü Milgram study 

ü 21 Male student’s American students Volunteer – paid $15 a day. 

ü Checked for mental and physical health problem. 

ü Randomly divided into roles of prisoners and guards.  

ü Set up at Standford university 

ü Controlled observation 

ü Prisoner = passive and aggressive in attitude 

ü Guards = active 

ü 5 prisoners released due to extreme reactions others stayed for the 6 days 

ü Was supposed to last 2 weeks 

ü Pathology of power = enjoyed the absolute control they had over the prisoners – making toilet visit privilege // making prisoner do press-ups.  

Evaluation : 

ü Controls were high in the observation everything was filmed and recorded. 

ü Consent given but the participants were not fully informed that they would be arrested at their homes. 

×     Ethical issues the participants were put through psychological harm – clearly shown distress during the experiment – although a year last after the experiment Zimbardo did follow up on them. 

×     Observer bias – Zimbardo admitted he lost his objectivitiy as the prison governor and got too involved in the process of the experiment. 

×     Ecological validity -  real prisoners are much bigger and there are other factors that effect obedience such as group conformity. If the individual is internalised by the groups beliefs and views they would not obey the orders from an authority figure if the group would not do the same. 

ü Haney et al. 1973 tested situational vs. dispositional hypothesis popular views = criminals were bad by nature or disposition. Zimbardo = bad situations – prisons could create bad behaviour improving the prison would improve behaviour.