Milgram saw the agentic state as a prewired reversible state, not lasting transformation.

Evidence

But that is not at all what Milgram said. He argued that, as an inevitable condition of life, people come “prewired” as it were, with two possible states of functioning. Any person, therefore, could be put into the agentic state by the right combination of authoritative pressures. Milgram did not suggest that having once been thrown into that state, a person is fundamentally altered or that once a person has been through this process, it will be effected more easily in the future. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3958

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishes Milgram’s reversible agentic state from Lifton’s doubled self and this author’s conversion-to-evil view — a key theoretical contrast in the harmdoing literature.