New York psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to test the truth of institutionalized pain—in other words, he wanted to figure out whether people could feel disconnected from another’s pain if they felt that they had no responsibility in causing it. It was 1963 and Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had recently stood trial for his crimes. Eichmann syndrome hypothesis, or the possibility that institutions like the military or government could make individuals feel like they played on an administrative role in the pain of others, ran rampant.

Milgram conducted an experiment to see if participants would administer high voltage shocks to a man in a room if asked in the guise of a scientific experiment. The person to whom they were administering shocks—who did not really feel anything—screamed and begged for them to stop. Most people continued administering the shocks to the highest levels. Asked about why they did it, the participants mostly said that they felt that they were just a part of a machine and were truly blameless. He published the results of his study in a work called Obedience to Authority.

Milgram called this blameless state an “agentic state” in which participants were not acting on their own free will. Milgram reconciles his definition of an “agentic state” with a constant, but redirected or altered, moral code. Milgram defines the “agentic state” as the point in which a subject abandons his individuality in order to benefit the greater group. Simultaneously, the subject transfers responsibility from himself to the authority figure. Milgram believed one’s normal moral compass is redirected in the “agentic state.” According to Milgram, a person in the agentic state is basically a cog in the large-scale machine of authority which still has a moral code to guide it.

Milgram called this the danger of authority theory because moral codes in civilian situations forces people to stop and think over decisions before blindly following through with an order. This increases the likelihood a person will disobey an authority’s order than if he were in the “agentic” state. If a person were simply following orders without worrying about the consequences of them on his conscious, he is less likely to stop doing them then a person who is in internal turmoil with each choice he makes. For example, a soldier taking orders from his superior is more likely to shoot another solider than a civilian is to shoot another civilian. In the agentic state, a person is not making choices, but following them, but if he still has moral guidelines, he has to face the consequences of his decision himself.

Innate morality goes against Milgram’s argument about the “dangers” of authority because forgetting about one’s morals causes a person to feel a physical and mental punishment which is more likely to make him stop taking orders, however. Milgram said a person in an “agentic” state fears no punishment because the authority figure will assume all responsibility. However, by going against one’s moral compass, even Milgram says the subject felt “stress” and “anxiety” which could be considered a self-inflicted “punishment.” For example, many subjects wiped their brows with anxiety or giggled with stress. An internal battle which affects the subjects’ emotional and mental health is a consequence against the subject who if he were in the “agentic state” would feel little or no responsibility, therefore little or no stress. Because the subject is receiving a negative consequence by taking the authority figure’s orders, he is more likely to stop and rethink the order before performing the desired action.