Humans Have Agency

I created this critical commentary for my graduate theories of human development class at the University of Rochester. The professor asked us to read "Restoring Agency to the Human Actor" from Swann and Jetten (2012), which refuted the common idea that people in groups have a harder time acting individually in high-pressure situations. My critical commentary is below.

Humans Have Agency

This week I chose to comment on Swann, W.B., & Jetten, J. (2017). Restoring agency to the human actor. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(3), 382-399.

“The opposite of a great truth is also true. (McGuire, 1973, p. 455)”

I absolutely loved this paper, probably my favorite one yet. I was also pleased to see a fellow Australian, Jolanda Jetten, as one of the authors!

I have a high-level familiarity with some of the most renowned studies in human agency, including the Milgram obedience study, the Asch conformity experiment, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment, and the bystander effect as investigated by Darley and Latane. It was enlightening to learn about other significant works from this paper, such as Steele and Aronson's research on stereotypes, Baumeister's concept of ego depletion, and Alloy's work on depressive realism.

As confirmed by our authors, these studies on human agency have historically been considered landmarks, universally true in their claims that humans nearly always lose agency when placed under power, such as authority or in a group. Furthermore, this loss of agency has historically been considered detrimental to the individual and society.

Swann and Jetten offer an insightful perspective. After re-examining the data from these historical studies, they present a new viewpoint. We learn that humans do not inherently lose agency in these contexts. Instead, reinterpreting the data with modern methodologies reveals that individuals often strive for human connection, prefer engaging in tasks they enjoy, and do indeed often express their agency, albeit in various ways depending on the situation.

“Upon close scrutiny, then, it becomes apparent that putative evidence that powerful situational forces routinely deprive people of agency has been overstated at best.”

Swann and Jetten imply that potentially the experimenter bias has confounded the outcome of these experiments and that the language given in these reports taints the perspective of the reader so that one may come away with the idea that humans don't have agency.

This got me thinking a lot about the historical background. My understanding is that these human agency studies came about after WW2 as an attempt to understand how Nazi soldiers were able to commit atrocities.

Swann and Jetten infer that these studies may have inadvertently just reinforced an American patriotic bias, that collectivism is the source of evil and if given the chance an individual will fall to it. This also props up the popular western bias of individual freedom being a universal right and good.

I felt this was incredibly important and it highlighted the potential underlying corrupting biases within the scientific method itself. Is Science just another way to promulgate the opinions of those in power? Instead of being a search for objective truth, if that exists?

Swann and Jetten call for transformation of the scientific method. They want to synthesize qualitative and quantitative schools of thought, using new technology, new ecological settings, and longitudinal timeframes.

“New technologies that allow laboratory researchers to track naturally occurring behaviors after participants leave the experimental laboratory (e.g., mobile sensing techniques; Harari, Gosling, Wang, & Campbell, 2015; Harari et al., in press) may be particularly useful in expanding the temporal frame of research. Such technologies may allow researchers to track behaviors on a scale that was once unimaginable. In fact, through “Big Data” techniques researchers can collect billions of data points from vast numbers of participants.

I find this prospect extremely exciting. In relation to my character in the Up series, I am left wondering, maybe Suzy is expressing agency, but in ways and with factors that are hidden to the researchers and viewers? I am also left wondering, if we did another Up series, could the experiment rely on an app on the child's phone and a continuous data stream instead of just interviews every 7 years?