One reason people obey is because legitimate social power is held by authority figures whose role is defined by power held by society or the situation, for example police officers. This usually gives them the right to exert control over the behaviour of others, and others usually accept it. We feel obliged to obey these people because we respect their credentials and assume they are correct in what they are doing.
A strength of legitimate authority being an explanation for obedience is that there is supporting evidence from Milgram’s study. When he carried out his experiment in a run-down office block with the experimenter wearing a suit rather than a lab coat, obedience levels dropped to only 48% of participants giving the 450v shock, compared to the original 65% when in the prestigious Yale University setting. This is a strength as it suggests that participants no longer believed in legitimate authority of the experimenter and so were less prepared to obey his orders.
A limitation of using Milner’s results is that his research may be culturally or historically biased. Some critics say that the results show more about the historical and cultural climate of the USA at the time -when McCarthyism was at large and people feared being accused of being communist spies- than fundamental psychological principles. The study was conducted when obedience was seen as a good thing and this may be why many of the participants went along with what the experimenter told them to do. This is a weakness as it means the study may not be showing actual reasons for obedience, such as legitimate authority.
Another example is the agentic state theory. When in the agentic state, people are more likely to ober, as they become the ‘agent’ of another person’s wishes and therefore enter a different state of mind where they feel they are not responsible for their actions. They delegate responsibility to the person in authority giving them demands.
A result of the agentic state being used as an explanation for obedience is that results from Hoffling’s study supports the idea. Nurses were asked to administer a double dose of a drug they had never heard of to a patient. This order was given over the phone by a doctor that they had never met (taking orders over the phone was against hospital policy as a doctor’s signature had to be obtained before administering any drug). 21 out of the 22 nurses went to fetch the drug and administer it to the patient even though it was against the rules. This is a strength as it suggests nurses were in an agentic state where they did not believe they were responsible, but attribute responsibility to authority (ie the doctor who gave the orders).
A limitation of using Hoffling’s study as evidence is that it is a field experiment so has low control over extraneous variable. We therefore do not know that the IV (the phonecall) is effecting the DV (whether or not the nurses obeyed) so you cannot establish cause and effect. This is a weakness as it mean the supporting evidence may not be valid to use as support the agentic state theory as an explanation for obedience.
Gradual commitment is the idea that when people have already complied with a trivial and seemingly harmless task, they find it difficult to refuse to carry out more serious, escalating requests. Each request is a small step further than the last that they never feel they are being asked to do something that is shocking or a “big deal”. They become committed more and more from doing reasonable things to things that are completely unacceptable- without noticing.
A strength of using gradual commitment as an explanation for obedience is that it is useful in real life situations. For example, a “chugger” would hook a potential customer in by catching their eye and gradually drawing them in following a series of steps such as asking them how they are, and whether they care about the cause, and so on. This is a strength as it means the explanation can be generalised to real life uses and there is support from real life evidence.