Agency theory

• Agent - someone that acts for or in place of another.
• Agency Theory - ”we are more likely to obey orders when we enter an agentic state. Individuals sometimes act as agents for people as they assume person giving orders will take responsibility.“
• 3 states: autonomous state - agentic shift - agentic state.
• Autonomous state: we remain independent and free. We behave according to our own principles and we are responsible for what we do.
• Agentic shift - moving from the autonomous state to the agentic. This occurs when we see someone as an authority figure.
• Agentic State - we feel as if others are responsible for what we do and there is no personal responsibility. We act on behalf of someone else.
• People may remain in an agentic state because “aspects of the situation allow the person to ignore or minimise the damaging effect of their behaviour.“ Moral strain is reduced by shifting blame/responsibility and denying the damage caused.
• Agency Theory AO3. Milgram attempted to use the theory to explain events like the holocaust, by demonstrating the theory in his experiments.
• Agency theory AO3 - there is an artificial nature of supporting research. Milgram’s supporting experiment involved “teachers” shocking “students”. This does not happen in real life, giving the study low ecological validity. The supporting study also used a biased sample of 40 20-50 year old men. This makes the study androcentric, meaning it may not be possible to apply the agentic theory to anyone other than men.
• Agency theory AO3. The theory regards people as passive, as if they will do anything they are told. This takes away free will and also ignores dispositional factors.