Applying Milgram's Four Theories Of Obedience

Obedience is to obey with an order, request, law or submission to another’s authority. People have often pondered as to why we do what other people tell us to, even when we are unsure about it ourselves. Is it simply the circumstances we find ourselves in or is it our personality type, like the suggest ‘authority personality’ type. Milgram did a number of experiments to try and find answers to this and proposed ‘Agency Theory’ as an attempt to explain his results. He believed that people worked on two levels: the autonomy level, where your behaviors are your own and you’re aware of the consequences and accepting of the responsibility. The other is the agentic level where you pass the responsibility and blame onto an authority figure, freeing

At the top, there is the system or establishment. This may be the Government, the armed forces or to apply it to an everyday setting the company you work for. The stronger the system is to you, the more likely you are to obey its authority figures. Authority figures are the second factor that a person’s obedience depends on. Someone who has higher status than you in the system would be deemed worthy of you obeying. Examples of this can be a prime minister or army general against a shadow cabinet MP or Private, even your Boss against yourself. The final defining factor as to whether you obey or not is the legitimacy of the order you are being given. A good example of this is at work if your boss asked you to undress, you would not obey him and probably call him out for sexual harassment. However, if he asked you to clean all the keyboards at work for being late even though it’s not a part of your job to do so you wouldn’t question him. This theory can be used to explain why the Nazi’s obeyed such grotesque orders. They were told by their leader, who was both their country ruler and the ruler of their army (Adolf Hitler), to murder many people after being manipulated into thinking they were vermin. Therefore, legitimizing the orders given by a system and authority figure who is respected and of higher status than everyone