Obedience, Disobedience, And Disobedience

The author also uses things like examples and past experiences to get his central idea about obey and disobey across. He uses the example of a social worker from a hospital. In this example, he goes about it by asking the women if she is against all authority. She replies stating that she is strongly against any type of authority, but she later realized that she was not completely against it because she was allowing the pilot to fly the plane. During this section of the story, the author once again brings up Milgram’s experiment. Dalrymple states that according to Milgram, people are only doing what they are told. He also examines the fact that during the experiment why people chose to keep going with it even though they did not agree. According to the writer, this type of obedience would be blind because the person is not thinking for themselves but instead just following orders. This applies

1. The researcher in this experiment was psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The study took place at Yale University in the year 1963. The researcher’s hypothesis was that if there is a demanding authoritive figure, then the other person will obey that authoritive figure just because of their position, even if it violates their morality and their ethical beliefs. He based this of his theory that people who would never hurt someone purposely, would if told to do so by a figure of authority.

“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 Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram reports from his studies of how far an individual can go in obedience to instructions and he pointed out that individuals can go as far as causing serious harm to the other people. Basically, the experiments are meant to test the choice that an individual would make when faced with the conflict of choosing between obedience to authority and obedience to one’s conscience. From the tests, it was found out that a number of people would go against their own conscience of choosing between what is wrong and what is right so as to please the individual in authority (Milgram 317). However, the experiments conducted by Milgram caused a wide range of controversy for instance; according to Diana Baumrind, the experiments were immoral. Baumrind notes in ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that Milgram did not only entrap his subjects, but he also potentially caused harm to his subjects (Baumrind 329). Based on the arguments that have been presented by the two authors, it is apparent that the two authors are concerned with real life situations, authority and ethics but the difference is that they both view these perspectives from different points of view as indicated by their writings. By and large, they also tend to show the importance or the insignificance of the experiments.

In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.

In "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem," Erich Fromm (1963) argues that society will self-destruct without achieving freedom through disobedience. Fromm begins with analogies of Hebrew and Greek mythology showing how disobedience to a god freed humans. Using this correlation, Fromm shows freedom as a condition for disobedience, and vice- versa. Therefore, Fromm proclaims that without disobedience the human race could destroy itself within a generation.

The Nuremburg Trials of 1945 were some of the most controversial military tribunals to be held in the 20th century. In the trials, Nazi war criminals were put on trial for the atrocities they committed against the Jewish population of Germany. When asked why they had committed such acts of horror, many of the Nazi soldiers attested by saying that they were under orders to do so. The trials questioned the motives behind instances of mass human torment which have led many scientists and psychologists to strive to understand the rationality behind human obedience. Two of these psychologists, Theodore Dalrymple and Erich Fromm explored the instances in which disobedience and obedience to authority should be applied. Fromm wrote his article

In the modern age of America, there are many people who have read and abided by the beliefs of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a philosophy created by Henry Thoreau that states one must not conform to certain laws for a variety of reasons, which was also an ideology utilized by Martin Luther King Jr. The world has witnessed many acts of disobedience from the masses, and have thus portrayed the idea that this belief still operates successfully. The ideology that surrounds civil disobedience also strongly influences the individual in a particular society, which also depicts the principles of this belief have adjusted to the modern world. In the new age of America, the beliefs of Thoreau and King are still prevalent and found in society due to the influence it has on movement that brings change; thus, illustrating that American citizens commonly refer and utilize this belief.

Civil disobedience is defined as the “refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in government policy or legislation, characterized by nonviolent means”; theories on this topic have been debated for centuries. (American Heritage Dictionary 3rd Edition pg161) Henry David Thoreau was well known for his refusal to participate in the political systems or activities of his era, not only by refusing to pay his poll taxes for six consecutive years, but also by announcing that he did not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau stresses the need to prioritize one’s conscience over the dictates of laws. A person should not be obligated to devote his or her life to eliminating evils from the world, but is only obligated not to participate in such evils themselves. He argues that the government rarely proves itself useful and this derives from the power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate views. Justice is the quality of being just, impartial or fair. Thoreau doubted the effectiveness of reform within the government, and argued that voting and petitioning for change served useless. He felt that justice had different standards for each different group. Which raises the question, is justice fair for everyone? When a government is unjust, people should

Civil disobedience is present in our day to day lives. During the civil rights protests occurring in Birmingham, AL, Eugene Connor was the Commissioner of Public Safety who publicly attacked African Americans with fire hoses and dogs. The Boston Tea Party was a rebellion which led to major tax reformation. Another moment in history of disobedience would be the Civil Rights movement. Oscar Wilde claims social progress is promoted through disobedience and rebellion which is valid.

For years, many have questioned the so called “evil” that seems to be inside of people. There have been multiple experiments set to find the answers to these questions. Although, the real question is, why do people act the way they do? Rob Reimen, director of the movie A Few Good Men is about Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer, who is assigned to defend two Marines accused of murdering Pfc. William Santiago. With the help of Col. Nathan Jessep and Lt. Cdr. JoAnn Galloway, Kaffe brings the accused Marines, Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, into court to prove that they are not guilty of murder because they were “just following orders” (Reimen). However, why did Dawson and Downey follow the orders, if they knew the result would be hurting another? Why did they not rebel against it? Maybe it was because of the situation, or how obedient the two Marines were, or many it is just the plain and simple evil at work. Nevertheless, two articles that mention the experiments to test this is “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. The results gathered from these experiments confirms the belief of hidden wickedness inside human beings. Plus Zimbardo himself made an hypothesis that good people can become evil in the blink of an eye. He based this hypothesis on his prison experiment. Both of these authors addresses how their experiments determine how the obedience and the

Stanley Milgram experiment, he gave some examples from his own experience of obedience and explains how sometimes it is important to obey in order for a system to works; such is the example of the hospital that Dalymple mention in his article, he explains how he had to follow some orders from his superior even if he did not wanted to, because on the inside he knew that it was not right that he disagrees with his superior every time he was not completely agree with him, because then the system of that specific hospital may damage. This is exactly what happens on politics, or even in families; sometimes people that have some hierarchy will make their best to make their system work in every aspect, in order for this to happen they have to give some orders and even make some rules so that other people around them follow them without any

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

In society, obedience to authority is ingrained in humanity from an early age, causing some individuals to blindly obey orders without contemplating the credibility of the source. In psychoanalyst Erich Fromm’s article “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” he explains that throughout human history obedience has been associated with virtue and disobedience with sin (Fromm 127). Fromm suggests that our conscience is an internalized voice of authority (126). Fromm claims individuals need to distinguish the difference between rational and irrational authority because obedience is effective when individuals want to obey, instead of fearing to disobey (127). Two other authors who examine obedience are Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee

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