in this video we're starting to look at some of the content of social psychology particularly obedience you need to understand the psychological definition of obedience discuss the positive and negative effects of obedience understand the real life context um from which obedience was born and describe and evaluate milgram's agency theory of obedience so the psychological definition for obedience is complying with the rules set by a recognized Authority which may impose sanctions for obedience it is where the individual gives up their Free Will hands it over to an authority figure by doing exactly what they say even if they don't believe what they're doing is correct now quite often following the orders can be a good thing if you think about a driver obeying a road sign it prevents an accident from happening so actually being obedient to an authority figure can actually be a positive within Society however there are often aspects where this can be a downside if we look at destructive obedience for an example this is when we're we're doing something then because we're acting as an agent we're following that uh authority figure but it's something immoral it's something that will harm another person so obedience is following the direct orders of a person in the authority but destructive obedience is following these orders that can lead to the harm of another person now mgraham was very interested in destructive obedience because a lot of his research Grew From The Holocaust and from the uh the atrocities that happen within the Holocaust now he actually attempted to prove at the beginning that German culture had just was just different there was something about German culture that raised people to obey to be agents of authority figures um and he wanted to test this idea that these German people were different but he quickly found actually that people in general were surprisingly obedient to Authority now part of milgram's agency theory suggests that there are two states and two way of acting so the first way the first one is an autonomous State now in an autonomous State the part the person the participants will direct their own behavior they choose how they want to act they don't follow an authority figure and they take responsibility for their own actions at all time now the second state is an agentic State now this involves when somebody does obey an authority figure when they act as an agent for society they obey the orders of an authority figure however importantly they assume that the responsibility for that behavior or for those actions falls to the authority figure and thus don't take any responsibility themselves now Milgram would suggest that we act agentically in a situation or a social role because it seems that Society demands that from us if we look at this as just a summary to help you to conclude autonomous state is when somebody acts independently they're self-controlled they take responsibility for their own actions they follow their Free Will and their moral compass and they have a conscience now a gentic state is quite the opposite the authority figure takes the responsibility you would say that in an agentic State someone is being controlled they are an agent of that authority figure because they're doing now Milgram discusses why this happens and this is just an important part of the theory as as naming and describing the two states Milgram suggests that we are socialized into developing the capacity for the agentic state during childhood so we are taught by society that it's important that we obey this is then reinforced in school in favor of maintaining order in school you are taught you have to obey the teachers the teachers are the authority figures the teachers are in the uniform and you have to obey them in order to be able to learn and to keep the classroom safe now like children in the classroom we are all constantly subordinating our needs and wishes in society and we're doing that in order to be able to help Society progress so even at workers adults people will identify themselves as part of an organization and will actually put the the needs of the employees and of the company often before the needs of their own now the consequences for this Disobedience particularly within the agentic state is something called moral strain now moral strain mgram says results when we have to do something that we believe to be immoral in order to function as an agent of authority and therefore benefit Society now mgram suggests that in order to deal with moral strain we will use defense mechanisms to avoid that distress of us accepting that we've taken part in that action or we've broken on morals now and often one for this is denial in which people will deny that it was their fault or that they had anything to do with it if we think about the cases that we've learned about Adolf aishman he refused to take responsibility for his actions in the crime he denied that they were his fault now this is quite similar in participants in Milgram studies as well um and in the Holocaust as perpetrators refused to confront what they were doing now when we look at evaluating agency theory of obedience it is so so important that you remember that agency theory is a theory it's not a study so I suggest we use a process called Scout in order to help us to evaluate this now the S stands for supporting evidence is there any studies that do support what agency theory says C is conflicting evidence is there anything that disagrees with agency theory any studies or evidence we can call on there or is other explanations are there any different theories of obedience that the agency theory differs from usefulness within Society this is very similar to the application one that we look at within a study and then testability How likely or or available is it that we can test this study to this Theory to see if if it's uh correct okay so let's look through the evaluation then so a strength of agency theory is that it helps us to understand some of the most horrific behavior that has happened in the world for example we keep talking about the example of the Holocaust in which the German soldiers were in an agentic State when they obeyed their commanding offices because they saw them as an authority figure and therefore as a result they murdered thousands of Jewish people agency theory explains and supports milgram's 1963 study and the variations in which people do obey oby the destructive orders they commit destructive obedience in the sense of they harm somebody else but they as a result will suffer stress from this such as in Milgram study a lot of the participants were nervously laughing and they were having fits they couldn't cope with what was going on there's a lot of support and evidence for agency theory one that I've named and mentioned here is blast in 1996 who showed students the edited film of Milgram study and question their responsibility now a student suggested that mgram took on the role of the authority figure and this supports agency theory because the participants were seen as being in a gentic state and therefore they weren't to blame for their actions obviously milgram's own research supports his theory as well and Burger's replication in 2009 which we look at as the Contemporary study still supports this idea of agency theory today hofling another famous study where um hofling had a a doctor phone a hospital um and over the phone gave a nurse um destructive orders so orders to administer an overdose or a dead dose of a drug to a patient and hofling wanted to see whether the nurses would obey the doctor as an authority figure even when the instruction was over the phone which was clearly against protocol and actually they did so hofling research supports this as well there's also support from Bushman 1988 who found that when a request was made to give a motorist change for a parking meter it was much more likely to be followed if the person requesting it had the had a uniform on so they looked like an authority figure however there are obviously weaknesses of agency theory the first being that there are a lot of alternative theories of obedience so other explanations such as charismatic leadership Theory because this suggests that some people are just very charismatic they are particularly skilled at gaining obedience regardless of their position of their authority figure agency theory doesn't explain individual differences either we've talked about Gretchen brunt who was a participant within milgram's original study who refused from the very beginning to take part in the study saying that she'd seen too much pain too much murder within the Holocaust and within World War II and she refused to take part Milgram doesn't explain this now on the screen at the moment that's are exam questions that I really strongly recommend that you practice ready for your exam if you just want to pause the video and have a go at some of these and review your knowledge of agency theory