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In social influence, is agentic state, a situational or dispositional factor?

Agentic state is the idea that people in society have been socialised to follow certain laws and moral codes. This involves giving up some free will and autonomy (which begs to differ to the question, do humans really have free will?). An agentic state can explain why some people obey authority. When people obey authority in the agentic state, they will no longer see themselves responsible for their actions, but of the authority figure that they are following. They are essentially displacing their guilt to another person by assuming that 'since a person in power has told me to do this, it's their fault, not mine'.

But is this a dispositional (internal, something to do with their innate characteristics or beliefs) or situational factor?

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 1

thirteenreasons

This is just a guess, but I think its situational as there is the term agentic shift, where some one shifts between agentic and autonomous so that suggests people can change easily!