This essay is evaluating theory and research on factors that affect rates of obedience. Understanding why people feel and act the way they do support social psychologist to study the social influence on obedience, conformity, behaviour and decision making. Social psychology is the study of how people think, feel, influence, behave and relate to each other, as well as the social environment in which people live. As no two individuals or relationships are exactly the same, people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours could be influenced by other people. For example, one’s level of obedience, the behaviour could change when been observed. Psychological variables like feelings, thoughts and behaviours are variables that can be measured in human beings. Amongst others, obedience is one of the few studied in social psychology.
Obedience is a type of social influence where an individual complies with instructions from an authority figure. The work of one famous social psychologist, “obedience to authority” at Yale University, Stanley Milgram (1963) was
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Participants were deceived (deception) from the beginning that the experiment was about “the effects of punishment on learning” as well as the recorded electric shocks that were delivered. Another ethical issue was protection from harm, though the participants were debriefed at the end of the experiment but there was no right to withdraw. After the experiment, many of the participants showed signs of distress and reported feeling high levels of stress. The study lacked population validity as the participants volunteered to take part in the study. The original sample was all male (40), which cannot be generalised to women, status, race and or culture hereby lacking external validity. The study was also criticised to have low ecological validity as teachers do not deliver shocks to learners in real life
Conformity and obedience are both social behaviors that are influenced by those around us and determines our behavior in social situations. When we change our attitude or behavior based on those around us, we are conforming to their behavior. When we obey what we are told, by what we perceive to be an authority figure, we are being obedient. Conformity and obedience can have positive or negative results on our lives, depending on the situation and the individuals involved.
Obedience. To comply with or follow demands. This is huge in anthem, in the beginning children are raised in this place called the home of infants and basically its a early brainwashing station. In this home there was nothing but several hundred beds for them and thats it because the council didn’t want them to have anything to distract or have something interest them, they wanted it to be as
“The Perils of Obedience” was written by Stanley Milgram in 1974. In the essay he describes his experiments on obedience to authority. I feel as though this is a great psychology essay and will be used in psychology 101 classes for generations to come. The essay describes how people are willing to do almost anything that they are told no matter how immoral the action is or how much pain it may cause.
In this experiment, subjects are explained that this is “a ‘learning experiment’ to ... study the effects of punishment on memory” (4). Yet, the real intention here is to measure the participants’ compliance towards the experimenter. This controversy is unethical as subjects are volunteering for a cause that does not exist. They are misled since they are not exposed to the real purpose of this study.
There is an intrinsic desire to follow something, whether that be a religious icon, a political leader, or a social role model. Obedience, like the need for authority, is part of what gives man a specific identity. Obedience is a social and cultural necessity. While the importance and influence of obedience differs culture to culture, between all groups of people, in all types of countries, and under all forms of government, however menial, it is as ingrained as is smiling or frowning.
For example, in Lord of the Flies, Jack orders that Wilfred be tied up and beaten for no reason and the boys do as they are told without question (Golding 159). We also see this in the “Stanley Milgram Experiment” as the teacher repeatedly shocked the learner because he was instructed to do so (Milgram). In both instances we see how obedience plays a big role in the novel and the experiment.
Compliance to power is instilled in every one of us from the way we are raised. Individuals have a tendency to obey orders from other individuals on the off chance that they perceive their power as ethically right and/or lawfully based. This reaction to authentic power is found out in a mixture of circumstances, for instance in the family, school, and work environment.
I am now going to talk about what factors would make obedience more likely. First it all started with a man named Milgram. Milgram wanted to see how far people would go and what they would do. He conducted an electric shock experiment.
In 1963, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a disputable, but highly revered, study on obedience. The experiment was designed to test people’s morals versus an extreme authority, but, as predicted, obedience prevailed. Then in 1973, Philip G. Zimbardo created his own experiment, not unlike Milgram’s, that analyzed the potential of individuals to withstand the pressure of succumbing to an obedient role based on the environment. Both Stanley Milgram, author of “The Perils of Obedience,” and Philip Zimbardo, author of “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” conducted controversial experiments that proved that when an ordinary person was put into a different role it affected their obedience to authority.
Milgram (1963) was possessed with inquisitive about how far people would run in agreeing to a course in case it included harming another person. Stanley Milgram was enthused about how adequately regular people could be influenced into submitting anathemas for example, Germans in WWII. The method of consistence to master while fundamental administration is a most adversarial and disturbing example that has surrounded bit of mental examinations. One such examination which has been done in different assortments over the world is: Milligram attempt, which focuses on a champion among the most fundamental mental slants find in human be The celebrated Milligram cerebrum science tests, finished in the 1960s, anticipated that
As the experiment continues to advance with every answer the leaner gets wrong, the participants cranks up the voltage higher and higher delivering a “shock” to the learner. With every shock, the learner gives complaints about his heart condition, and even asks to be released. At this point, the participant is getting a little hesitant and tells the experimenter that the learner needs to be checked on, but when the experimenter doesn’t show any signs of remorse and tells the participant to keep going, he just continues along. At the three hundred volt level, the learner bangs on the wall and asks to be released again. The learner then goes silent and the participant is instructed by the experimenter that silence is considered incorrect. (Cherry 8). In this experiment, participants become immersed in the procedures, reading the word pairs with exquisite articulation and pressing the switches with great care. They want to do their job, but at the same time they’re still human and hearing another human being yelling to the top of their lungs, they start to show moral concern. (Milgram 7). “The subjects entrusts the broader tasks of setting goals and assessing morality to the experimental authority.” (Milgram 7). When the participants started having an insurgent behavior, they were read the following lines by the experimenter. First, please continue. Next, the experiment requires you
In Milgram’s study a participant was told to administer a shock to a person if they answered a question incorrectly. They were told to do this by the experimenter who was wearing a white coat and was portrayed as an authority figure. The participant therefore felt that the responsibility for his actions were being placed on to the experimenters shoulders, rather that their own. The main reason an individual will obey; will be due to the direct response from the high status of the authority figure. Many people would do something that they may not usually do if they were asked to do it by a person in a uniform such as a policeman or a doctor. It is also that they believe they will not be held responsible for their actions as they were only obeying a figure with a higher authority than themselves. Another reason that people may obey another is if there is no clear cut reason why they shouldn’t. If they are told to do something which is considered reasonable by another person, they may obey because there seems no logical reason why they shouldn’t.
Ethical and moral concerns often exist with the use of deception in psychological research and experiments. Bortolotti and Mameli (2006) argue that, with the satisfaction of some requirements, the possibility exist for the use of deceptive techniques without causing harm to
The issue with obedience is not totally psychological. The way that society is trying to form life and how it is being developed has a lot to do with it. There was a day when people were able to give a reasonable response to any situation because society would fully absorb what it meant to obey and to disobey. Obedience is an action during which someone obeys with the directions given by a leader or an individual in charge. There is one comparison between obedience and conformity that is each involved in the rejection of private responsibility. There are many variations between obedience and conformity . The primary one is obedience that an order or instruction given when, in fact, no instructions or an order had been placed. Erich Fromm states; "All martyrs of religious faiths, of freedom, and of science have had to
Today our society raises us to believe that obedience is good and disobedience is bad. We are taught that we should all do what we’re told and that the people that are disobedient are almost always bad people. Society tells us this, but it is not true. Most people will even be obedient to the point of causing harm to others, because to be disobedient requires the courage to be alone against authority. In Stanley Milgram’s "Perils of Obedience" experiment, his studies showed that sixty percent of ordinary people would agree to obey an authority figure even to the point of severely hurting another human being. (Milgram 347).