Social💭 • Milgram's Agency Theory

Question 1

What are the 5 main processes involved in agency theory?

Answer 1

• Autonomous state
• Agentic shift
• Moral strain
• Difusion of responsibility
• Agentic state

Question 2

What is the autonomous state?

Answer 2

A self governing state where people are control of their own descisions and are able to conciously and confidently disobey orders they dont agree with

Question 3

What is agentic shift?

Answer 3

Being given an order places people into agentic shift, a state in which a person doesnt know whether do obey or disobey, consequently also experiencing moral strain; agentic shift is a transition period between returning to the autonomous state or contiuning into the agentic state, depending on the decision to obey or disobey

Question 4

What is moral strain?

Answer 4

A sort of mini-state people undergo whilst experiencing agentic shift. Moral strain is when a person disagrees with an order as it doesn’t align with their personal morals or beliefs, but struggles with whether or not to obey due to the pressures of the person giving the order/ setting they are in - if a person continues to obey after moral strain they have entered the agentic state

Question 5

What is the agentic state?

Answer 5

The agentic state is a state people enter after being through moral strain/ experiencing strain on whether or not to obey, but obeyed anyway. People in agentic state are obeying/ carrying out an order regardless if they agree with it or not, they are ‘just following orders’ and consequently diffusing responsibility from themselves onto others.

Question 6

What is the diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 6

Diffusion of responsibility occurs when people enter the agentic state as they are now almost mindlessly obeying orders that they do not agree with. They simultaniouslty diffuse the responsibility of them obeying and carrying out the desired action onto the authority figure/ their superior that gave them that order

Question 7

Where is an example in History, known to Milgram, where diffusion of responsibiliy occurs?

Answer 7

When German soldiers were interviewed and asked why they preformed the horrific actions they did (Hollocaust) and all they said was that they were ‘just obeying orders’ - ultimately implying that they were in agentic state as they didnt agree morally with orders but still carried them out and consequently diffused the responsibilty from themselves onto their superiors hence them not taking responsiblity for their own actions

Question 8

How can Variation #13 from Milgram’s study be applied to agency theory?

Answer 8

• Rebels that didnt obey 2nd confedorate displayed behaviour from autonomous state
• Rebels not obeying ‘order’ given by 2nd confedorate to take a ‘new’ route to the exeperiment showcasing self-governing behaviour and disobedience, therefore autonomous state

Question 9

How can aspects from Milgram’s Original study be applied to agency theory?

Answer 9

• Participants that displayed physical behaviour such as digging fingernails into skin, nervous laughter, sweating were displaying behaviour we can asosciate with moral strain
• This therefore implies alongside the fact that most of them continued to obey after this behaviour that they also were in agentic state and passed through agentic shift as they were obeying even though they visibly disagreed with actions

Question 10

How can Variation #7 from Milgram’s study be applied to agency theory?

Answer 10

• Many participants were in autonomous, self-governing state due to the lack of physical immediacy with the confedorate not being in room and delivering instructions/ prods over the telephone instead
• This therefore allowed participants to feel they could choose to disobey and not follow instructions given, therefore remain in control of their own decisions (in autonomous state) (obedience went from 65% -> 22.5%)

Question 11

What was Milgram’s belief about humans ‘programming’

Answer 11

Milgram believed that humans were inately programmed to obey; like in nature with animals such as wolves with their ‘alpha’ wolf, Milgram thinks we are programmed to follow humans that display ‘alpha’ or leader-like behaviour/ are more likely to obey them e.g. people with status, ‘experimenter’ in Milgrams study wearing lab coat and being ‘from Yale Uni’ presented him as ‘more alpha like’, therefore making participants of study more likely to obey