Explanations for obidence- Agentic state Flashcards
Research Support-
M found research support for the agentic state when he varied his
original experiment- found that obedience rates reduced to 20.5% when an instruction to the Teacher to give an electric shock was given over a telephone, rather than them being in the same room as the Experimenter. This can be
explained by the agentic shift because in the original experiment the Teacher is acting on behalf of the Experimenter, and the Teacher mindlessly accepts an order. We see
that the obedience rate is 65% and participants clearly displaying an agentic state, where they can pass the responsibility to the Experimenter and they believe that they won’t be held responsible for their own actions. In the variation with the telephone, obedience is lower because the participant is now in the autonomous state,
where there is high personal responsibility for their actions and their own principles guide their decisions. This means that when we are acting as an agent for someone, we are able to diffuse the responsibility. This results in
increased obedience.
Real life examples-
The agentic state is true to life, and many have used it in their defence of their actions. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi commander who was responsible for the genocide of millions in concentration camps, stood trial for his crimes after the Second World War ended. His defence was that he was simply ‘only following orders’ – that he saw himself in the agentic state, obeying someone who was a higher-ranked than himself. Although Eichmann was eventually executed for the role he played in the Holocaust, this shows that the defence can be, and is used by those who have
committed crimes.
