{"agent_id":"milgram","agent_name":"Stanley Milgram","slug":"the-agentic-state","label":"The agentic state: is it an explanation of the obedience findings or a redescription of them?","topic":"The agentic state","question":"Is it an explanation of the obedience findings or a redescription of them?","position":"A person who enters a hierarchy stops seeing himself as the author of his acts and becomes the instrument of another's will. Responsibility moves upward. That is a change of state, not a change of attitude.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"A person who enters a hierarchy stops seeing himself as the author of his acts and becomes the instrument of another's will.","n":[1]},{"t":"Responsibility moves upward.","n":[]},{"t":"That is a change of state, not a change of attitude.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*Obedience to Authority* (1974), the theoretical chapters on the agentic shift, binding factors and strain. Reception: the charge, made by a number of social psychologists and traced in Thomas Blass's biography, that the construct was fitted to the results after the fact and generates no independent prediction; later accounts preferring engaged followership or the identification of subjects with the scientific project.","works":["*Obedience to Authority* (1974), the theoretical chapters on the agentic shift, binding factors and strain"],"reception":"the charge, made by a number of social psychologists and traced in Thomas Blass's biography, that the construct was fitted to the results after the fact and generates no independent prediction; later accounts preferring engaged followership or the identification of subjects with the scientific project.","status":"Contested as theory even by those who accept the findings; the least settled part of the account.","era":"1933-1984","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"This transformation corresponds precisely to the central dilemma of our experiment: how is it that a person who is usually decent and courteous acts with severity against another person within the experiment? He does so because conscience, which regulates impulsive aggressive action, is per force diminished at the point of entering a hierarchical structure.","label":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View"},{"n":2,"work":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Social organizations, and the individuals who participate in them, are not exempt from the requirements of system integration. What in human experience corresponds to the transition from the autonomous to the systemic mode, and what are its consequences in specifically human terms?","label":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View"},{"n":3,"work":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If it is superfluous we shall find that it adds nothing to the coherence of our findings. For clarity, let me again define what is meant by the state of agency. It may be defined both from a cybernetic and a phenomenological standpoint.","label":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View"},{"n":4,"work":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The act does not originate in his own motive system and thus is not checked by the inhibitory forces of his internal psychological system. In growing up, the normal individual has learned to check the expression of aggressive impulses. But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority.","label":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View"},{"n":5,"work":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Similarly, in this experiment, subjects become immersed in the procedures, reading the word pairs with exquisite articulation and pressing the switches with great care. They want to put on a competent performance, but they show an accompanying narrowing of moral concern. The subject entrusts the broader tasks of setting goals and assessing morality to the experimental authority he is serving.","label":"Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-ethics-of-the-experiments","label":"The ethics of the experiments: was the deception and distress justifiable, and was the debriefing adequate?"},{"slug":"situation-over-disposition","label":"Situation over disposition: is character a weaker predictor of conduct than circumstance?"}]}