Outline and Evaluate Milgram’s Concept of “Agentic Shift”.

Outline and Evaluate Milgram’s concept of â€Å"agentic shift†. Following results of his world famous obedience studies, Milgram developed his own theory of why people obey a malevolent authority – â€Å"agentic shift†. Milgram findings led him to believe a person can be in one of two psychological state at any particular time, and the â€Å"agentic shift† is what causes ordinary people to follow orders because they believed the experimenter has a legitimate authority. Milgram believed people acted without thinking, irrespective of their own beliefs - the participants were obliged to do as the experimenter said because of the experimenters â€Å"authority†. However other researchers such as Blass (1999) and Reicher and Haslam (2011) broadened the outlook†¦show more content†¦(An expert). Blass (1999) enabled the understanding we had on Milgram’s notion of agentic shift to broaden, providing us with a different perspective on Milgram findings. Milgram (2004 [1974] cited Dickerson, 2012:373) himself sugge sted that both expertise and authority are important, ‘because the experimenter issues orders in a context he is presumed to know something about, his power increases’. Furthermore, can Blass (1999) change our perspective on ‘agentic shift’, presuming ‘agentic shift’ is still considered the most efficient way of explain Milgram’s findings then could expertise be the reason for the ‘agentic shift’ rather than authority. In addition to this critical review of the Milgram study, Blass (1999) addressed the conformity levels during the time of the experiment, Blass (1999) suggested that Milgram’s high levels of obedience were a symptom of the time and culture in which the studies were carried out, and in more recent years conformity has decreased, however there was no relationship found between the date of the study and level of conformity found. Although there are a number of findings that dictate the need for explanation obedience, Reicher and Haslam (2011) argued that rather than a form of ‘agentic shift’ occurring for the