Wednesday 29 September 2010
Outline and Evaluate One or More Explanations of Why People
Obey
There are three main reasons why people obey – Legitimate Authority, Graduated Commitment and Agentic Shift, these are the three reasons identified by Milgram.
Legitimate Authority is when people feel compelled to obey people with a high social status (Legitimate social power), their role is usually defined by society, and we generally respect the person with power because of the responsibility or hardship required in their role. This can be found with Policemen, we are more likely to respond to them and obey their orders than a traffic warden. We may still obey the authority figure even if we are asked to do something immoral or unethical. This was found during Milgram’s study, the teachers obeyed the researcher because of his legitimate social standing at the prestigious university, Yale.
