Many individuals in today’s society are being influenced by outside attractions. Many are blindly manipulated to an authority due to the sense of protection. The comfort of feeling protected gives one the feeling of being part of the group and the feel of security. Authority; a model or leader who creates rules to make individuals follow. People obey to authorities because of the fear of failing and loneliness. It is a human nature to be afraid to be left out and experience solitary. In addition, individuals are not willing to disobey because of the fear of punishment from an authority. This forceful thought makes one to follow with no self- conscience, soon they will lose confidence. As Stanley Milgram mentions, “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to,” (144). By shown in contempt society, people are prone to obey to a certain authority due to the fear of punishment and being in solitary. This type of obedience eventually will lead one to lose confidence, go against their own morals, and become irrational, which will be deleterious to future society. People nowadays are prone to obedience because they are afraid to be isolated from the community. Community is known as a group of people who truly have no fear in relying on each other. People in a community usually share common goals and have a sense of belonging within the group. In order to overcome the fear of being in solitary, one tends to obey to the authority in the
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 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 and Conformity Both obedience and conformity involve social pressure in obedience the pressure comes from behaving as you are instructed to do; whereas in conformity the pressure comes from group norms Behaviour in obedience is determined by social power, whereas in conformity it is influenced mostly by the need for acceptance. In nearly all societies, certain people are given power and authority over others. Our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with various degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems.
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
Conformity and obedience are some of the factors that usually influence the various processes that determine the manner in which an individual behaves in a social set up. They also have an impact on how people follow and adhere to social norms (both written and unwritten) as well as fashions and their immoral actions (Milgram, 2010). Several aspects come to play when one is asked by another individual to do a particular thing. First, they will need to consider whether whatever they are being asked to do is morally right or wrong. Second, based on the circumstances, they can either obey or comply and better still, they can decline to do it. The term obedience refers to the act of an individual doing something that they have been asked to do. On the other hand, conformity regards to how others influence people. They do things that they were not requested to do. The influence is usually through the behaviors and thoughts of others. This paper will compare and contrast the factors involved in conformity and obedience.
The author exemplifies the ways that disobedience helps the society and its contribution to furthering the human race but notes on the fact that blind obedience may eventually account for the end of civilization.
Authority cannot exist without obedience. Society is built on this small, but important concept. Without authority and its required obedience, there would only be anarchy and chaos. But how much is too much, or too little? There is a fine line between following blindly and irrational refusal to obey those in a meaningful position of authority. Obedience to authority is a real and powerful force that should be understood and respected in order to handle each situation in the best possible manner.
“Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure” (1.simple psychology 5/8/14). Regina George as the authority figures in this group and majority of the school shows how the rest of the group all try to please and obey her every order so they are accepted and liked
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
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).
In today's day and age contemporary society's are built upon the thought of citizen conformity to a prescribed set of values and norms to. This idea of complies to social standards makes one think as to how these norms of fact society as a whole and an individual. The main driving component which draws people too conformity are the desire to be excepted in certain status groups. People fear that if they do not conformity is norms that they will be breaking the social contract therefore been shunned by society at not being able to achieve their personal goals. Further analysis of these forces for conformity in contemporary society it will be shown that these forces produced negative ethical conduct and
In the article "Group Minds", author Doris Lessing discusses obedience in a group environment. She explains that Western societies honor individualism, but the human race is blind to the ways in which groups steal a person’s originality. She further believes that psychologists and sociologists hold facts that could teach us to be wary of these social pressures. Lessing clearly shows that society withholds information concerning the instinctive desire of acceptance and the influence conformity has on individuality.
set the human race on the path to thinking on their own, but obedience to authority in the
‘Social Order exists because people are afraid to disobey the rules of society.’ Explain and assess this claim. [25]