Social Psychological factors

• The agentic state is when a person follows orders from a authority figure and although this makes a person feels anxious, they do it because they don't feel responsible .
• Autonomous state is the opposite of agentic state is when a person when we switch from a autonomous state to a agentic state, this is called an agentic shift.
• Binding factors is how a person copes with the moral strain of doing something bad for someone else, someone else will or that they were stupid for getting themselves in that situation
• One positive is real life support . This is shown how they follow the person in the white coat even though they think it is wrong. Also, it shows how they react after being told to shock someone which is binding factors.
• Another positive is real life application. This is because people get told to do actions that might not be morally right by a figure of authority in office jobs and many trades. It is easily to relate to real life.
• One weakness is that doesn't tell us why people do not always obey authority figures. Some people may not obey because they believe they are morally right and it is not explained by agentic state
• Legitimacy of authority is how likely people obey people who have authority over us. These are people who have authority through society eg police
• Destructive authority is blindly obeying people due to the legitimacy of authority. This causes problems when authority figures are questionned
• One positive is that it has practical examples. This is shown in real life war crimes and it helps explain why people do real bad things but how there not bad people
• Another positive is that it accounts cultural differences. It can reflect how different social hierarchies can affect peoples descions and how different upbringings means that people are either more or less people are willing to obey.
• In 1977, only 2/18 nurses obeyed when a known drug called valium was ordered at 3 times recommended. This disproves legitimacy of authority as the nurses did not obey the authoritative figure which means it is not always valid.