Describe And Evaluate Psychological Research Into Obedience

Obedience to people in authority is a deep-rooted trait that we all possess by virtue of our upbringing, and as Milgram put it, “it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others” (Milgram 1974). This trait is exhibited every day in family circles, workplace and school. People are most likely to obey instructions from people they perceive their authority to be legal or moral. We see people obeying their pastors, leaders in various societies and other people they see as higher to them; and they obey anything they are being told even if it involves killing another human being. They justify their actions, however wrong, on obedience to authority.

The first reason that Milgram found that people obey is because people feel like they have to obey someone if they have a high social status or a highly respected job, this is called legitimate authority. Bickman (1974) supported this theory by doing an experiment on the streets of New York. Bickman had three men dress up as a policeman, a guard and a regular passerby in a shirt and tie, he then had the three men ask other passerby’s to either pay a parking fine or pick something of the floor, it was found that

For each experiment there was one teacher (participant); one learner (an accomplice called Mr. Wallace pretending to be a participant); and one experimenter (an actor called Mr. Williams who wore a grey lab coat). The participant and accomplice were asked to draw slips of paper from a hat, which was rigged, therefore, allowing the accomplice to always be the learner and the participant to be the teacher. The learner was taken into a room in Yale Interaction Laboratory, where he was strapped to an electric chair with electrodes attached to his arms. The teacher and experimenter were taken into another room where there was a shock generator with 30 labelled voltage levels ranging from 15 to 450 volts. 15 volts was verbally designated to be Slight Shock, and 450 volts was verbally designated to be a danger-severe shock (XXX).

With each wrong answer came an electric shock that the teacher, a random male participant, had to physically cause. The teacher could hear the learner after a while begging to stop. At this point the teachers causing the pain are obviously uncomfortable. Some start by laughing nervously and other just immediately beg to stop the experiment. At this point the experimenter gives a series of orders to push the teacher to continue. As a result, two-thirds of participants carried on shocking the learner to the highest level of four hundred and fifty volts. All the participants involved continued up to three hundred

First, an individual usually internalizes compliance, but this is not necessarily the case in obedience. The latter can occur through internalization as well as through the existence of cognitive dissonance. In other words, conformity is a form of social influence that emanates from within the individual (Milgram, 2010). As it has been mentioned earlier, one does not have to be asked to do something for them to do it in the case of conformity. It is a decision they make due to the external pressures caused by group influence or the influence of another individual. Compliance is ethologically a survival tactic whereby one is forced to do certain things to fit in the group as doing the contrary will make them appear odd. This is not the case in

In the chapter "The Dilemma of Obedience" of the book Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View, Stanley Milgram explores the concept of obedience to authority, and why people cannot defy authority even the situation is totally conflicting with morality. He introduces his ideas by giving the definition of obedience, and mentions Nazi extermination as an instance of obedience, which contradicts with moral values. According to Milgram, obedience idiosyncratically binds humankind to systems of authority, and links the individual action to political purpose. In terms of observations, obedience accepted as an inveterate behavior inclination, and obeying a system of authority has been comprehended as

According to the Oxford dictionary Obedience is defined as a compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority. In many situations authority demonstrates the ability to control man to go against their beliefs in what is morally right. Due to fear and the insecurities of man, authority may push the limits of society to a point where the individual may temporarily give up their identity. This is proven by The Stanford Prison experiment

In Stanley Milgram’s experiment, “The Perils of Obedience,” one person signed up to aid in a study of learning and memory; this person was the “teacher.” This person did not know the other person accompanying him in the study is an actor. This person was a “teacher” in the study, and the actor was the “learner;” there was another actor, the “experimenter,” who was the authority

Although no such experiment can be 100% conclusive, the Milgram experiments do shed considerable (and disturbing) light on the behavior of ordinary people in obedience of authority. They also explain, to a large extent, the seemingly perplexing behavior of many ordinary Germans during World War II and some American soldiers in Vietnam. (“Milgram,” Obedience to Authority..).

Obedience is a basic behavior that practically everyone has. Unfortunately, some authority is essential for community living. In a way, obedience is a form of submission as old as time itself. Society appears threatened by disobedience and hesitation. In the experiments described in “The Perils of Obedience”, ethics and hesitation get in the way of obedience.

The Stanley Milgram Obedience experiment is an experiment to replicate Nazis following Hitler’s orders to kill Jews in World War II. Whereas, in this experiment, forty males were recruited to complete this study; they were told it was a memory and learning experiment. In this experiment, every time the subject (learner) answered incorrectly, the recruited male (teacher) would have to shock them. The results were: all forty subjects (teachers) obeyed up to 300 volts, and twenty-five of the so-called teachers, continued to give shocks up to the maximum level of 450 volts.

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

People have been changing their behavior or obeying someone else’s commands for years. This continues today in our everyday lives. Conformity and obedience seem similar but differ in several ways. Conformity is defined by psychologists as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. Similar to this, is obedience. Obedience is defined acting in accordance with a direct order or command. Normally people conform to reap a reward or to avoid punishment. If we comply with a direct order or command it is considered obedience. Most of the time when people comply, it is to be accepted among others so they are not seen as outsiders. On the other hand, when we obey, we are obeying a command an authority figure

Stanley Milgram’s (1963), Behavioral Study of Obedience measured how far an ordinary subject will go beyond their fundamental moral character to comply with direction from

Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.