Milgrams Agency Theory

Stanley Milgram's Agency Theory: Psychology

Agency theory is based on Milgram's views on obedience to authority figures. During his earlier experiments, Milgram observed participants go through moral dilemmas and experience an agentic shift, where they obeyed the orders of authority figures as they became agents of the authority figure. The participants placed the consequences of their actions on the authority figure, not themselves.

When we make decisions about how to behave, we typically consider the consequences of our actions. This is because we feel responsible for our own behaviour. Milgram called this the autonomous state.

However, what happens if someone else has decided and orders you to follow them? Milgram argued that in situations when we are asked to do something by a legitimate authority figure, we don't always think about what the consequences of that behaviour will be.

A reputable figure has decided, and we are just following orders. This is what Milgram called the agentic state, caused by an agentic shift.

The capacity for an agentic shift from an autonomous to an agentic state was proposed as an evolutionary adaptation that allowed humans to create organised and hierarchical social structures.

Stanley Milgram didn't necessarily believe we are born to obey, but rather obedience develops when our capacity to obey is reinforced by our experiences in hierarchical societies that reward obedience.

Milgram's Agency Theory: Binding Factors

Milgram noted certain factors were required to maintain the agentic state, known as binding factors. After entering an agentic state, participants were kept in the state due to:

• Pressures of the authority figure and surroundings
• Reluctance to disobey and disrupt
• Legitimacy of the authority figure (detailed more below)

Milgram's Agency Theory of Obedience: The Moral Strain

Not all authority figures will be moral and just. Yet, our need to obey often doesn't discriminate between orders we agree with and those we don't agree with.

So, what happens when we are asked to do something we don't consider moral? Milgram proposes that such scenarios result in an internal conflict, resulting in a moral strain when people are in an agentic state.

To cope with the discomfort of a moral strain, people can enter into denial and refuse to accept the reality of their behaviour. Others may display avoidance behaviour, try to minimise their involvement, or engage in less severe actions than ordered.

According to Milgram, entering the agentic state can relieve people of some of the guilt associated with their behaviour and decrease the effects of moral strain.

Stanley Milgram Experiment Summary

To test out his theory, Milgram conducted a famous electric shock study in 1963. The study was conducted in a laboratory, and forty male participants participated in the experiment.

• Milgram used deception to avoid social desirability bias. Participants were told they were participating in a learning study that was supposed to investigate whether punishment with electric shocks can enhance learning.
• As the 'teachers', participants were asked to administer electric shocks of increasing voltage (from 15V to 450V) to the 'learners' anytime they made a mistake.
• The learners were, in fact, confederates - actors that pretended to be real participants.
• Milgram found that 65% of participants obeyed and administered the potentially lethal (450V) electric shocks to the confederate, knowing the danger associated with the action.

Fig. 2 - Milgram used electric shocks in his infamous study on obedience.

It was concluded that the agentic theory could predict people's behaviour as most people obeyed, even when asked to do something cruel and unethical.

Stanley Milgram's Study Variations

Later Milgram conducted 19 more study variations investigating the influence of different situational factors on participants' obedience. Some of the situational factors that influenced obedience included proximity to the victim, location of the experiment and the uniform worn by the authority.

• When the participants had to be near the learner, the proportion of participants who obeyed dropped by over a half.

• The participants' obedience also dropped if the experiment location was less legitimate.

• When the orders were given by an ordinary-looking person rather than a professional-looking experimenter in a lab coat, the level of obedience dropped to only 20%.

Milgram's Agency Theory Evaluation

Milgram's agency theory has received a lot of support. However, some argue that it doesn't fully account for the research findings and people's behaviour in the real world. Let's examine the strengths and limitations of Milgram's theory.

Strengths of Milgram's Agency Theory

One strength of Milgram's theory is that it produces testable experimental predictions. The theory predicts that if ordered by an authority, the average person will be capable of committing even immoral acts as the responsibility is shifted to the authority figure.

Moreover, the theory has been largely supported by existing studies, including the studies conducted by Milgram and the naturalistic Hofling (1966) study. The theory is also supported by cross-cultural research (Blass, 2012).

Another strength of the theory is its ability to explain to some extent why people engaged in historical atrocities like the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide.

Limitations of Milgram's Agency Theory

The Agency Theory has been criticised for portraying people as passive and supporting the idea of social determinism. The theory doesn't account for people's personal motives to commit immoral acts. People can be motivated not only by the pressure from the authority but also by their personal feelings of prejudice and hatred, as the reports of the Rwanda genocide showed.

Moreover, the theory doesn't explain individual differences in obedience. After all, not everyone in the Milgram study obeyed the authority.

The Agency Theory focuses mostly on situational factors influencing obedience and can be contrasted with theories focusing on individual factors, like the Authoritarian Personality Theory, which predicts that some people are more likely to obey due to their personal characteristics.