Obedience and Conformity Essay

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.

Obedience is the requirement of all mutual living and is the basic element of the structure of social life. Conservative philosophers argue that society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the priority of the individuals' conscience. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, designed an experiment that forced participants to either violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure or to refuse those demands. Milgram's study, reported in "The Perils of Obedience" suggested that under a special set of circumstances the obedience we naturally show authority figures can transform us into agents of terror or monsters towards humanity.

“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.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

Obedience as an act can be traced back to the very beginnings of human history. The common belief has always been to obey authority at all cost. This act has never been questioned because authority corresponds to the common belief that respecting authority and obeying them will lead you to success in all aspects of life. Obedience is not defined to specific situations and its context can be portrayed in various ways. For example, Erich Fromm writes in his essay, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem; “Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of disobedience.” This statement suggests that everything which we perceived to be

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

Human beings are defined as ''social animals'' because in every aspects of life they live together, they form a variety of groups and improve relationships with each other. Interaction with others is a natural result of living in society. In the process of interaction, society and its rules has a social impact on each individual. If people face with any kind of social impact such as group pressure, great part of them show conformity by changing their behaviors, ideas, decisions in expected way. A person conforms if he or she chooses a course of action that a majority favors or that is socially acceptable. Some kind of conformity is natural and socially healthy but obeying all the norms, ideas, and decisions without thinking or accepting

In the article title “Individuality vs. Conformity: The Healthy Middle?” by an anonymous high school student it says that there are only two thing that a typical high school student wants to typically achieve in their short high school life (par. 1). One of these things is to fit in (par. 2). The second one is to be different (par. 3). How could you do this?. You could choose to be individual or just conform. However I really maintain the idea that what we should really do it's to stay in the middle so we won't forget who we really are and still be liked by different groups of people.

Obedience and Disobedience has been a part of key moments in history. Many have studied forms of obedience to learn how it affects people and situations. For example, Stanley Milgram conducted a well-known experiment in which the subject, named the “teacher” must shock the “learner” every time he doesn’t remember a word pair from a memory test. The focus of this study is on the teacher, and whether they will administer killing shocks when told to by an authority figure. Another well-known experiment is the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. A group of college boys were separated into two groups, prison guards and prisoners, and were put

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

Obedience is a facet of every society, it helps structure social life and maintain social order. However, there are instances where obedience can become destructive, as is the case when crimes of obedience are committed. Crimes of obedience can be most closely identified with war crimes or even to some extent torture. Many of the people who commit crimes of obedience, or who participate in torture may seem like normal people. This is exemplified in Stanley Milgram’s famous behavioral study of obedience. In his 1963 experiment Milgram revealed how strongly the participants complied with the experimenter’s demands to continue the harmful behavior, even though it was against the participant’s own beliefs (Milgram,

The political system in the United States of America is ruled by a two party system that is currently fighting for control of the economy and government. In the last century the country has been involved in several conflicts including two world wars and the cold war, which permanently instilled fear and terror in the American psyche. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the economy was brought to the edge of failure leaving a bi-partisan political system with the attitude that there is either a democratic or republican solution to the many problems Americans face as a nation. Due to the fact that there is so much at stake, both political parties have resorted to tactics that prey on the fact that human beings usually conform to

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

When it comes to most social situations, group or peer pressure are almost always present in some way. Generally an individual receives the most pressure from one’s primary group. However, as one gets older, the secondary groups become sometimes more prominent and can change the obligation. There is a certain dependency that one has on each group, hence the obligation, and if everyone in that group was supporting a choice that was against an individuals beliefs, they are more likely to overlook right and wrong and go with the group. In todays society being needed or belonging is valued and I think that this is a factor in conformity. Additionally, in society’s norms, we are our groups. Each group could be completely unrelated, but we would