social-psychological factors

Question 1

agentic state

Answer 1

person does not take responsibility instead they believe they are acting on behalf of someone else i.e. they were an agent. they are experiencing high anxiety when they realize what they are doing is wrong but feel powerless to disobey.

Question 2

autonomous state

Answer 2

autonomy means to be free - so a person in an autonomous state is free to behave according to their own principles and therefore feels a sense of responsibility for their own actions.
- the shift from autonomy to agency is called the agent shift
- this occurs when a person perceives someone else as a figure of authority

Question 3

binding factors

Answer 3

milgram then raised the question why the individual remains in this agentic state
- bindings factors allow the person to ignore or minimize the damaging effect of their behavior and thus reduce the moral strain they are feeling

Question 4

legitimacy of authority

Answer 4

most societies are structured in a hierarchal way. this means that people in certain positions hold authority over the rest of us.
this authority is legitimate in the sense that it is agreed

Question 5

destructive authority

Answer 5

problems arise when legitimate authority becomes destructive - when they use their powers to do cruel things that are dangerous

Question 6

blass and Schmitt (2001)

Answer 6

showed a film of milgram’s study to students and asked them to identify who they felt was responsible for the harm to the learner
- they blamed the experimenter rather than participant
- this indicated that the responsibility was due to the legitimate authority (top of the hierarchy)

Question 7

limited explanation

Answer 7

agent shift doesn’t explain many of the research findings. for example, it does not explain why some of the participants does not obey

Question 8

Mandel (1998)

Answer 8

there is research evidence to show that the behavior of Nazis can’t be explained in terms of authority and agent
- Mandel described the German reserve police battalion 101 the men shot civilians in a town in Poland. they did this even though they were not directly ordered to
- this challenges agents state theories because the reserve battalion were not ordered to obey, they did this on their own volition