agency theory

• Milgram proposed that we exist in two states: autonomous, where we act according to our free will and take responsibility for our own actions and agentic, acting as an agent of authority, doing things on behalf of the authority figure however, there are stages in between which cause the transition between autonomous and agentic.
• Many participants in his experiment experienced moral strain, which is the anxiety felt after being instructed to do something you wouldn’t normally do when acting in your own free will, they feel this is immoral and unjust, this often led to contemplating dissent. However, shifting to the agentic state relieves them from this anxiety as they displace responsibility onto the authority figure. Often people are uncomfortable carrying out the functions but resolve this by seeing the authority figure as responsible.
• One strength of this is that there’s supporting evidence to show the existence of moral strain and agentic state. Many participants in Milgram’s study experience moral strain as they were asked to administer shocks, something they would not normally do in their own free will, this was evident through nervous laughter, neck rubbing and sweating, this build up of anxiety cause many participants to contemplate dissent however, those who manage to displace the responsibility onto the experimenter ended up going all the way to max 450v.
• This is a strength as we can clearly see the shift from moral strain (distress) to agentic state (administering shocks for the experimenter) and this shift is known as the agentic shift in agency theory.
• One weakness is that not 100% of the participants obeyed, this theory doesn’t account for those who dissented in Milgram’s experiment, although all participants show some sort of moral strain and made it to 330v, only 35% of those participants dissented even after being instructed to keep going as “the experiment requires you to carry on”, showing that they did not displace responsibility.
• This is a weakness as it doesn’t account for other factors such as personality or culture, as some people may have an internal locus of control where they believe they have control over and are responsible for their own actions.