Agentic state and legitimacy of authority Flashcards
What is the agentic shift?
When a person sees themself as am agent for carrying out another persons’ wishes
What is the autonomous state?
When a person sees themselves responsible for their own actions
What happened when Milgram interviewed his particiapnts?
Typical reply was:
- “I wouldn’t have done it by myself”
- ” I was just doing what I was told”
Why might people adopt an agentic state?
Maintain a positive self-image
Once a person has entered the agentic state, what keeps them in it?
There is a social etiquette
Subjects fears if they break off, they will appear arrogant and rude
First condition needed for a person to shift to the agentic state?
Legitimate authority
What is legitmate authoirty?
Someone who is perceived to be in a position of social control within a situation
Second condition needed for a person to shift to the agentic state?
The definition of the situation
What is the definitionn of the situation?
Although the participant themself who performs the action ( ie shocks the learner) he allows the authority figure to define its meaning
What does legitimate authority requires?
An institution
The agentic state explanation and real-life obedience
Milgram claimed that people shift back and forth between and autonomous state and agentic state fails to explain the very gradual and irreversable transition that Lifton (1986) found in his study on German doctors
- They found that doctors had changed gradually and irreversibly from ordinary medical professional, concerned only with the welfare of their parents, into men and women capable of carrying out vile and potentially lethal experiments on the helpless prisoners
Staub (1989) suggests that rather than agentic shift being responsible for the transition found in many Holocaust perpetrators, it is the experience of carryig out acts of evil over a long time that changes the way in which individuals think and behave.
The legitimate authority explanation and real-life obedience
Many positive consequences of obedience to legitimate authority, it is also important to note that legitimacy can serve as the basis for justifying the harming of others
- If people authorise another person to make judgements for them about what is appropriate conduct, they no longer feel that their own moral values are relevent to their conduct
- As a result, when directed by a legitimate authority figure to engage in immoral actions, people are alarmingly willing to do so
A consequence of this is that people may readily engage in unquestioning obedience to authority, no matter how destructive and immoral are the actions called for.
The Agentic state as a loss of personal control
Fennis and Aarts (2012) claim that ‘agentic shift’ is more likely in any situation where the individual experiences a reduction in their sense of personal control
- increased acceptanve of external sources of control to compensate for this
-A reduction in personal control resulted not only in greater obedience to authority, but also in bystander apathy ( tendency to remain passive in the presence of unresponsive others when faced with an emergency
- And greater compliance with behavioural requests
The process of agentic shift is not confined to obedience to authoirty but may also extend to other forms of social influence where the individual feels ‘less in control of’ their actions
