Agentic state and legitimacy of authority - resistance to social

Milgram’s research is often described at being ‘counter-intuitive’. What does this mean?

The results go against what we might expect, given our knowledge of human behaviour.

What does Milgram seem to have demonstrated?

The power of the situation in shaping behaviour.

Moral constraints and compassion is ignored when the individuals is confronted by a powerful authority figure.

What is an agentic state?

When an individual doesn’t feel responsible for their own actions - guilt free.

Instead, they attribute responsibility to someone else, particularly a figure of authority.

What did Milgram (1974) say about the agentic state?

It is where a person “sees themself as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes”.

What is the opposite of an agentic state called, where the individual takes full responsibility for their actions?

An autonomous state.

What did Milgram refer to the process of moving from an autonomous to an agentic state as?

An agentic shift.

Where was an agentic state seen in Milgram’s 1963 study into obedience?

Interviews were carried out at the end of the study, where obedient participants were asked why they had continued to administer electric shocks despite the learner’s distress.

Lots of the participants stated “I was just doing what I was told”.

So the obedient participants felt no responsibility for the actions the authority dictated.

What is the explanation for why people adopt an agentic state?

They have the subconscious desire to maintain a positive self-image.

If in an autonomous state, an individual may assess the consequences of their actions for their self-image and refrain.

In an agentic state, the individual feels that because the action is no longer their responsibility, it no longer reflects their self-image.

So actions performed under the agentic state are guilt free for the participant, however inhumane they may be.

What are the binding factors of the agentic state? (What keeps them in it?)

In all social situations (including experiments), there is a social etiquette that regulates our behaviour.

In the case of the experiment, the participant must breach the commitment made to the experimenter in order to break off the experiment.

The subject fears that they will appear arrogant and rude if they break of the experiment.

These emotions help bind the subject into obedience, despite appearing small in scope compared to the violence being done to the learner.

What is the first condition needed for an genetic shift to take place?

The perception of a legitimate authority.

What is the perception of a legitimate authority?

When someone is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation.

What did Milgram (1974) believe about social expectations of authority?

He believed that there is a shared expectation among people that many situations do ordinarily have a socially controlling figure.

Therefore, where does the power of legitimate authority stem from?

Not personal characteristics, but from his or her perceived position in a social situation.

Where is an example of this in Milgram’s 1963 study?

In his study, the participant entered the laboratory with an expectation that someone would be in charge.

The experimenter fills this role for them.

He does this through a few introductory remarks and his ‘air of authority’. This fits the participant’s expectation of ‘someone in charge’.

What is the definition of the situation in legitimacy of authority?

There is tendency for people to accept definitions of a situation that are provided by a legitimate authority.

Although it is the participant themself who performs the action (eg shocking the learner) they allow the authority figure to define its meaning.

What does legitimate authority require if the authority figure’s commands are of a potentially harmful or destructive form?

Legitimate authority requires an institution - in order for the authority figure to be perceived as legitimate they must occur within some sort of institutional structure.

Eg a university, the military

What did Milgram find in a locational variation of his 1963 study?

That the category of the institution causes participants to obey, rather than its relative status within that catagory.

One variation of the study was in a run-down building - ‘Research Associates of Bridgeport’. This institution was known as a relatively inimpressive firm lacking in credentials. Yet it still obtained relatively high levels of obedience.

What did Milgram believe was the definitive real-life example of agentic shift?

The actions of American soldiers in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam war, in 1968.

Soldiers found a village full of non-combatants - old men, women, children, when they were expecting Vietnamese fighters.

The men were ordered by the commander to systematically murder the unarmed villagers. Over 500 villagers were killed.

Positive eval

RWA - Tarnow (2000) studied all the serious US aircraft accidents between 1978 and 1990 where a flight voice recorder was available, and where flight crew actions contributed to the crash.

Tarnow found that the flight crew had excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise - they accepted the person in authority’s definition of the situation.

This study supports the power of legitimate authority.

Negative eval

Agentic shift criticism - Milgram claimed that people shift back and forth between an agentic and autonomous state. Although Lifton (1986) found a very gradual and irreversible transition in his study of German Doctors working at Auschwitz.

Lifton found that the doctors had changed gradually and irreversibly from people concerned only with the wellfare of their patients to people capable of carrying out vile and lethal experiments on helpless prisoners.

Just plain cruel? - social scientists believe that some people use situations as an excuse to express their sadistic impulses. Eg Zimbardo SPE features guards rapidly inflicting cruelty on prisoners despite the lack of an authority figure telling them to do so. So there are individual differences - some people have evil tendencies.