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Agentic State & Legitimate Authority

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Agentic State and Legitimate Authority

Milgram suggested that people can enter an 'agentic state' in which they pass responsibility for their actions onto those giving the orders. The more legitimate an authority figure is, the more likely they are to be obeyed.

Agentic state

Agentic state

  • An agentic state is a state in which an individual behaves as the agent of another person.
  • This allows them to deny responsibility for their action and distance themselves from the consequences of those actions.
  • Milgram suggested that a person can be in two states:
    • When people have control and act according to their own wishes, they are said to be in ‘autonomous state’.
    • When a person obeys an authority figure, they give up some free will and enter into an ‘agentic state’.
Research evidence

Research evidence

  • In Milgram's (1963) famous study on obedience, he noted that during de-brief, participants admitted to feeling under ‘moral strain’, but still continued to obey. This is consistent with an agentic state.
  • He also found that when the researchers were not in the same room as the teachers and gave instructions via a telephone, obedience fell from 62.5% to 20.4%. This is consistent with an autonomous state.
Legitimacy of authority

Legitimacy of authority

  • People who are obedient accept the power and status of legitimate authority figures to give orders.
  • Individuals are more likely to carry out instructions given by such figures.
  • People learn to recognise the authority of individuals such as parents, teachers and police officers through early socialisation.
  • There are social roles within a hierarchy. The higher up the social hierarchy, the more perceived authority a person has, and the more likely they are to be obeyed.
Agentic shift

Agentic shift

  • Agentic shift is when individuals shift from the autonomous to agentic state.
    • Participants in Milgram's (1963) study started the experiment in the autonomous state but shifted into the agentic state when they started taking orders.
Staying in the agentic state

Staying in the agentic state

  • Milgram said three factors may have caused his participants to stay in the agentic state:
    • Insistence of authority - the experimenter told participants to continue even when they displayed signs of stress.
    • Pressure of location - the study was conducted in a university. Participants would see the experimenter as a legitimate authority.
    • Unwillingness to disrupt - participants might have felt like they couldn't stop the experiment because they'd already been paid.
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