Title: Agency Theory AO1 AO2 AO3 - PSYCHOLOGY WIZARD
Headings: AGENCY THEORY
AGENCY THEORY
MILGRAM (1973)
AGENCY THEORY EXPLAINS BLIND OBEDIENCE
THE AGENTIC SHIFT
RESEARCH INTO AGENCY THEORY
THE FINDINGS OF STUDIES
APPLYING AGENCY THEORY (AO2)
OBEDIENCE IN THE REAL WORLD
EVALUATING AGENCY THEORY (AO3)
CODA
EXEMPLAR ESSAY
HOW TO WRITE A 8-MARK ESSAY

Content: Moral Strain
When an authority figure issues an order that goes against our conscience, we experience moral strain. This is because we have two contradictory urges: to obey the authority figure (and society's expectations) and to obey our consciences (and keep our own self-image as "a good person"). Moral strain might appear as physical distress, like shaking or weeping. Milgram points out that his own participants used "defence mechanisms" (a term originally used by Freud) to lessen the moral strain: Denial: some of the participants in Milgram's study minimised the pain they were causing to the Learner, convincing themselves that the shocks weren't dangerous (even though "DANGER" was written on the shock generator); Milgram argues that many people in Nazi Germany did this, refusing to believe what was going on in the death camps
Avoidance: many participants tried not to look at the Experimenter or even look up from the shock generator
Degree of Involvement: some participants only flicked the switches on the shock generator lightly, as if this would somehow lessen the pain
Helping the Learner: