Agentic State and Legitimacy of Authority

Question 1

Describe the agentic state

Answer 1

• Milgram believed that in cases of obedience to destructive authority, individuals believe they’re acting on behalf of someone else and that they’re not responsible for their actions
• Acting as an agent and complete the order under the agentic state, a mental state where they feel no sense of responsibility or guilt for their behaviours
• Individuals may feel some moral strain or anxiety when they realise their wrongful behaviour but are powerless to disobey as they’re in a lower position in the social hierarchy to their authority figure

Question 2

Describe the autonomous state

Answer 2

• Most of the time individuals are in the autonomous state, a state of independence in which they have free will to chose how to behave and take full responsibility to their actions.
• However, in the presence of a perceived authority figure, they make a change from being autonomous to taking on the agentic state, called the agentic shift

Question 3

Why do people adopt an agentic state?

Answer 3

• The need to maintain a positive self-image.
• In the case of Milgram, participants are temped to obey and shock the learner but they may assess the consequences of this action for their self-image refrain.
• However once they move to the agentic state, this evaluative concern isn’t relevant as the action is no longer their responsibility.
• Actions performed under the agentic state are, from the participant’s view, virtually guilt-free, however inhumane they may be.

Question 4

What are binding factors?

Answer 4

• There are aspects of the situation which bind us to the task and allow us to block out the moral strain we’re experiencing, called binding factors
• For example, denying responsibility and making out it’s the victim fault helps us to block the moral strain

Question 5

What is legitimate authority and link it to Milgram’s study

Answer 5

• Legitimate authority, a person perceived to be a in position of authority of social control within a situation, allows for someone to shift to the agentic state.
• In Milgram’s study, the participants enters the laboratory with an expectation that someone will be in charge. The experimenter fills this role and isn’t challenged

Question 6

Describe how we determine legitimate authority

Answer 6

• Society is structured in a hierarchy with those at the top holding positions of authority, like police, parents, teachers and security.
• As society dictates their position, their authority is legitimate and we accept that they can exert their power to keep society in order
• We learn to accept these legitimate authority figures from an early age and are brought up to understand they have the power to punish us. As a result we’re willing to give up some of our independence and trust people in these positions to use their authority appropriately

Question 7

Describe how legitimate authority are limited

Answer 7

• Powerful figures may exploit their authority in a destructive way. e.g. Hitler is an example of a characteristic leader who used his legitimate authority to order people lower down in the social hierarchy to behave in cruel ways.
• If an authority figure’s commands are potentially harmful then for them to be perceived as legitimate they must occur in an institutional structure (e.g. university, military)
• The variation of Milgram’s study where it was in a run-down building, showed that this doesn’t have to be in a reputable institution, as the study obtained relatively high levels of obedience

Question 8

Describe an application of the agentic shift in real life

Answer 8

• The agentic shift can be found in the actions of American soldiers in 1968, in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War.
• Soldiers found a village of non-combatants while expecting the Vietcong fighters. Lt William Calley, platoon commander, ordered his men to systematically murder the unarmed villagers.
• The men carried out the command and over 500 villagers were killed. At his military trial, Calley didn’t accept his guilt, saying that he too had been following orders from his superior officer, Capt. Ernest Medina

Question 9

Give evaluation for legitimacy of authority (hierarchy)

Answer 9

• Blass and Schmitt (2001) showed a video of Milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner, Mr Wallace.
• Students blamed the ‘experimenter’ rather the participant, arguing he had responsibility due to his authority
• This is a strength of the legitimate authority explanation as it supports positions in the hierarchy can influence someone in a lower position.

Question 10

Give evaluation for the legitimacy of authority (cultural differences)

Answer 10

• Useful account of cultural differences in obedience
• Many studies show that countries differ in the degree in which people are traditionally obedient to authority. For example, Kilburn and Mann (1974) replicated Milgram’s procedure in Australia and found only 16% of participants went to the top voltage. On the other hand, Mantell (1971) found that German participants delivered the maximum shock
• This shows that in other cultures, authority is more likely to be accepted as legitimate and entitled to demand obedience from individuals. This reflects that way different societies are structed and how children are raised to perceive authority figures.
• This is a strength as supportive findings from cross-cultural research increases the validity.

Question 10

Give evaluation for agentic state (limited)

Answer 10

• The agentic shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings.
• For example, it didn’t explain why some of the participants didn’t obey in Milgram’s study. The agentic shift also doesn’t explain the findings in Holfing’s study. The agentic shift predicts that, as nurses handed over responsibility to the doctor, they should’ve shown high levels of anxiety and moral strain as they understood their role in the destructive process but this wasn’t the case.
• This is a weakness of the agentic state explanation as it suggests that the agentic shift only accounts for some situations. As if the social hierarchy was involved, then all humans would obey as if they were social animals

Question 11

Give evaluation for legitimacy of authority (power of legitimate authority)

Answer 11

• Tarnow (2000) provide support for the power of legitimate authority through a study of aviation accidents
• He studied data from a US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) review of all serious aircraft accidents in the US between 1978 and 1990 where a flight voice recorder was available and flight crew actions were a contributing factor in the crash. As with Milgram’s study, where participants accepts the experimenter’s definition of the situation, Tarnow found excessive dependence on the captain’s authority and expertise, with sometimes tragic consequence.
• NTSB report found ‘lack of monitoring’ errors in 19/37 accidents, providing a real-life demonstration of the power of legitimate authority to enforce obedience
• However, now in aircraft training, flight crew are told to not blindly follow the orders of obedience. Therefore there has been practical applications due to the legitimacy of authority explanation.