AO3 - agentic state

• Research support for the agentic state came from Milgram's own studies.

  • At some point during Milgram's experiment participants generally stopped giving shocks and asked the experimenter about the procedure
  • E.g. "Who is responsible if Mr Wallace is harmed"
  • After being told by experimenter that he is responsible not the teacher, they completed the procedure without objection
• One limitation is that the agentic shift doesn't explain many research findings about obedience.

  • it does not explain the findings of Rank and Jacobson's (1977) study
  • They found that 16 out of 18 hospital nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient
  • The doctor was an obvious authority figure. But almost all the nurses remained autonomous, as did many of Milgram's participants
  • This suggests that, at best, the agentic shift can only account for some situations of obedience.
• A limitation of the agentic state is that it is not supported by real world events.

  • Mandel (1998) described how members of German Reserve Police Battalion 101 murdered Polish civilians without being directly ordered to
  • They were given a choice so acted autonomously
  • It is possible that other reasons, such as hatred, prejudice, racism and greed also played a role in their actions
  • This suggests that Milgram's explanation of the agentic state is oversimplified, as it claims behaviour is the result of a single factor - acting as the agent of a destructive authority.