agentic state and legitimacy of authority

• P: Milgram's claim that people shift back and forth between an autonomous state and an agentic state fails to explain the very gradual and irreversible transition that Lifton found in his study of german doctors working at aushwitz

  E: Lifton found that these doctors had changed gradually and irreversibly from ordinary medical professionals, concerned only with the welfare of their patients, into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on the helpless prisoners
• Link for Lifton

  L: Staub suggests that rather than agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many holocaust perpetrators, it is the experience of carrying out acts of evil over a long time that changes the way in which individuals think and behave
• P: although Milgram believed that the idea of the agentic state best explained his findings, he did concede other possibilities.

  E: one common belief among social scientists is that he had detected signs of cruelty among his participants, who had used the situation to express their sadistic impulses . This belief was given substance by SPE. within just a few days, guards inflicted rapidly escalating cruelty on increasingly submissive prisoners despite the fact there was no obvious authority figure instructing them to do so.
• Link for agentic state or plain cruelty

  L: This suggests that, for some people, obedience might be explained in terms of agentic shift, but for others, 'obedient behaviour' may be due to some more fundamental desire to inflict harm on others
• P: Although there are many positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority, it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as a basis for justifying the harming of others

  E: if people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevant to their conduct. As a result, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, people are alarmingly willing to do so.
• Link for legitimate authority explanation

  L: A consequence of this is that people may readily engage in unquestioning obedience to authority, no matter how destructive and immoral are the actions called for.