Milgram treated mental attitude shifts as real changes comparable to reprogrammed automata.

Evidence

Since the agentic state is largely a state of mind, some will say that this shift in attitude is not a real alteration in the state of the person. I would argue, however, that these shifts in individuals are precisely equivalent to those major alterations in the logic system of the automata considered earlier. Of course, we do not have toggle switches emerging from our bodies, and the shifts are synaptically effected, but this makes them no less real. (p. 134) The first time I read this, I was startled and appalled by what I took to be the odd and pseudoscientific/pseudophysiological concept of the agentic state, by the notion of the “trigger” that switches an individual between normal and agentic functioning, and by the dichotomous and all-or-nothing character of being in one state or another. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3933