Agentic State AO3

• +Milgram's own studies support the role of agentic state in obedience. Most of Milgram's participants resisted giving the shocks at some point, and often asked the experimenter

  Who is responsible if Mr Wallace is harmed? When the confederate said ’I am‘, the participants often went through the procedure quickly with no further objections. This shows that once participants realised they were no longer responsible for their actions, they acted more easily as the experimenter's agent.
• -One limitation: agentic shift doesn’t explain many research findings about obedience. It doesn't explain the findings of Rank and Jacobson's study: they found that 16/18 nurses disobeyed orders from a doctor to administer an excessive drug dose to a patient. Eventhough the doctor was an obvious authority figure, the nurses remained autonomous -as did many of Milgran’s participants. This suggests that agwntix shift can only account for some situations of obedience.
• -Mandel described an incident in WW2 involving the German Reserve Police Battalion 101. These men shot many civilians in a small town in Poland, despite not having direct orders to do so - they were told they could be assigned to other duties if they preferred- meaning they behaved autonomously.