a03 agentic

• One strength of the agentic state/legitimacy of authority is that it is supported by real life examples of atrocities, an example of this is the my lai massacre officer william caley ordered his men to kill innocent viatenemse villagers. At the military trial caley stated he had just been following the orders of his superior officer..
• This is a real life example of the agentic state as when given orders caley did not take any responsibility because he purely saw himself as an agent carrying out another's orders. aditionally the superior officer would have been someone caley perceived to be a legitimate authority as he recognised that he was of a higher status and therefore this also would have led to him entering into the agentic state

  shown in Milgram' sexperiment when obedience dropped to 20.5% from 65%when a figure authority phone giving instructions.
• One weakness of the agentic state is there are real life examples which criticise this theory. Milgram claim of the reversible shift between autonomous and the agentic state, fails to explain the gradual and irreversible transition of the doctors which lifton found they went from caring and professional doctors to ones carrying out vile an potentially lethal experiments on their patients. This behaviour and gradual transition was also shown by holocaust perpetrators. suggests that behaviour may change and alter over a long period of time which is not expressed in the idea and research of the agentic state 
• One limitation is there is contradictary reserach as occurred in spe goes against this theory , within just a few days, normal men showed a shift to increasingly aggressive behaviour and characteristics like lack of guilt /responsibility which psychologists attributed to them being in the 'agentic state' despite there being no presence of a higher authority. this challenges milgram's research which states there has to be a legitimate authority present for someone to shift into the agentic state. Furthermore Although milgram believed the agentic state and LOA best described his findings (why people continued with teh shocks) the spe evidence gives substance to belief of social scientists that milgram had detected signs of cruelty within his participants and they used the situation to express these sadistic impulses and the his findings were just unflattering aspects of human nature not agentic state.
• These points suggest personality factors may contribute towards obedicence levels. Therefore it can be further suggested that a limitation of This theory is that it ignores individual differences e.g. Adorno explains that those with authoritarian personalities are more susceptible to obedience so fails to explain why some people obey a legitimate authority and why some people don't. An example of this is 35% Milgram's participants disobeyed the orders given by the man who was percieved to be a legitmate authority. Therefore it is deterministic by asusming everyone will obey those eprcieved as a legitimate authoirty and reductionist.
• ignores individual differences, not all obey to the same level must be other factors other than presence of a legitimate authority that make people obey (e.g. Adorno explains that those with authoritarian personalities susceptible to obedience)something loa fails to explain why some obey a legitimate authority and why some people don't. example 35% Milgram's disobeyed orders given by the man who was percieved to be a legitmate authority. Therefore it is deterministic and reductionist.