[Topic 5] Agentic state and the legitimacy of authority

Question 1

What is the Agentic State?

Answer 1

• Milgram defined the agentic state as being when we see ourselves “as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes”

Question 2

What is the autonomic state?

Answer 2

• We see ourselves as being responsible for our behavior

Question 3

What is the Agenitc shift?

Answer 3

• When we move from seeing ourselves as being responsible for our behaviour to seeing someone else as being responsible for it.
• It may occur as a way of maintaining a positive self- image.
  Because behaviour is no longer our responsibility, our self image is unaffected

Question 4

What is a legitimate authority figure?

Answer 4

• Someone who is perceived to be in position of social control in a situation.
• For a shift to the agentic state to occur, we must perceive the person telling us how to behave as a legitimate authority.

Question 5

How is authority perceived as legitimate?

Answer 5

• Must occur within some sort of institutional structure such as the military
• In Milgram’s studies, it was the category of the institution rather than the uni itself which was the institutional structure.

Question 6

Evaluation 1: Legitimate authority can be used to justify harming others

Answer 6

• Legitimate authority can be used to justify harming others
• When directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, people are willing to do so
• This unquestioning obedience to authority occurs no matter how destructive the actions that these orders called for. This is especially true in the military
• This implies that when people authorise another person to make judgements for them about appropriate conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct

Question 7

Evaluation 2: People are not always in the agentic state and can revert back to an autonomous state

Answer 7

• People are not always in the agentic state and can revert back to an autonomous state
• When participants considered the experimenter a legitimate authority they underwent an agentic shift but reverted to an autonomic state afterwards
• However Lifton found that doctors at Auschwitz showed a gradual and irreversible transition from caring professionals to individuals who carried out evil acts.
• Therefore, carrying out evil actions over time may change people’s behaviours more than a sudden and reversible agentic shift