Authority can only become an issue once the rights of the individual are being impinged, a concept represented in both V for Vendetta and the Stanford Prison Experiment. These two texts, along with the study of the concept of authority and the individual, have expanded my understanding of myself, individuals and the world. It has especially broadened my knowledge on the crossover of the concept, the ability for the individual to have authority and the ability for both sides to be perceived as good or bad and the power of a person’s individuality. “The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.” - Professor Philip G. Zimbardo, psychologist who created the Stanford …show more content…
Twenty-four average men were entered into a fake prison setting, twelve of which who had been given the role of prisoner and twelve with the role of guard. Throughout the course of the experiment we see the environment effect negatively on the actions of the group of guards, clearly demonstrating that situational forces can force a person to cross the line between good and evil. We see this heavily embodied in the guard Dave Eshelman AKA ‘John Wayne’ – nicknamed by the prisoners in the study – the most brutal guard of them all, the one who demonstrated all the findings on the influence of power and authority and human behaviour. “I was kind of running my own experiment in there, by saying, “How far can I push these things and how much abuse will these people take before they say, ‘knock it off?'” But the other guards didn’t stop me. They seemed to join in. They were taking my lead. Not a single guard said, “I don’t think we should do this.”” – Dave Eshelman. This guard was a leader among the guards, showing he had most authority. This quote shows the hive mind mentality that began to develop among the guards, someone would start doing something evil but no one would step in to stop. This is very common in the world when someone has authority, people are too afraid to step up out of fear of what would happen. This relates to authority and the individual in terms of when one person has authority over a group of people, it is hard for the individuals to push back out of fear of the consequences if they
The late 1960’s famously introduced the idea of the “anti-hero”, which is defined as an individual with heroic qualities who is not in the position of an archetypal hero. One such example is the movie Cool Hand Luke, from 1967 starring Paul Newman. The movie surrounds a prisoner named Luke Jackson who refuses to comply or conform to the norms of the prison. The powerful Captain and the mysterious prison guard, whose silver reflecting sunglasses was the inspiration for one of the main prison guards in the popular Stanford prison experiment, tested his acts of defiance. This paper discusses the movie Cool Hand Luke and how the prisoners, Luke and the themes in the film relate to the Social Psychology 1ZO3 course focuses of conformity, non-conformity, and obedience to authority.
The power of blind obedience taints individuals’ ability to clearly distinguish between right and wrong in terms of obedience, or disobedience, to an unjust superior. In the article “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” Marianne Szegedy-Maszak discusses the unwarranted murder of innocent individuals due to vague orders that did not survive with certainty. Szegedy-Maszak utilizes the tactics of authorization, routinization, and dehumanization, respectively, to attempt to justify the soldiers’ heinous actions (Szegedy-Maszak 76-77). In addition, “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” by Theodore Dalrymple distinguishes between blind disobedience and blind obedience to authority and stating that neither is superior;
V for Vendetta is a great movie to watch in Civics class. It is a perfect film to discuss issues related to civics as it talks about citizen’s duty to overthrow corruption and more. As it is set against the ‘futuristic landscape of a totalitarian Britain’, this story focuses on a young working-class woman named Evey. In the event of being in a life-death situation, she meets V who rescues her. V makes her realize that she has the potential to do anything she desires and discovers the truth about herself as well as V. This movie is covered with various relations to Civics.
If a person of authority ordered you inflict a 15 to 400 volt electrical shock on another innocent human being, would you follow your direct orders? That is the question that Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University tested in the 1960’s. Most people would answer “no,” to imposing pain on innocent human beings but Milgram wanted to go further with his study. Writing and Reading across the Curriculum holds a shortened edition of Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” where he displays an eye-opening experiment that tests the true obedience of people under authority figures. He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority figures. Milgram is well aware of his audience and organization throughout his article, uses quotes directly from his experiment and connects his research with a real world example to make his article as effective as possible.
Obedience has always been a trait present in every aspect of society. Parents have practiced enforcing discipline in their homes where children learn obedience from age one. Instructors have found it difficult to teach a lesson unless their students submit to their authority. Even after the adolescent years, law enforcement officers and governmental officials have expected citizens to uphold the law and abide by the standards set in society. Few will understand, however, that although these requirements for obedience provide positive results for development, there are also dangers to enforcing this important trait. Obedience to authority can be either profitable or perilous depending on who the individual in command is. In the film, The Crucible,
In this study Zimbardo chose 21 participants from a pool of 75, all male college students, screened prior for mental illness, and paid $15 per day. He then gave roles. One being a prisoner and the other being a prison guard, there were 3 guards per 8 hour shift, and 9 total prisoners. Shortly after the prisoners were arrested from their homes they were taken to the local police station, booked, processed, given proper prison attire and issued numbers for identification. Before the study, Zimbardo concocted a prison setting in the basement of a Stanford building. It was as authentic as possible to the barred doors and plain white walls. The guards were also given proper guard attire minus guns. Shortly after starting the experiment the guards and prisoners starting naturally assuming their roles, Zimbardo had intended on the experiment lasting a fortnight. Within 36 hours one prisoner had to be released due to erratic behavior. This may have stemmed from the sadistic nature the guards had adopted rather quickly, dehumanizing the prisoners through verbal, physical, and mental abuse. The prisoners also assumed their own roles rather efficiently as well. They started to rat on the other prisoners, told stories to each other about the guards, and placated the orders from the guards. After deindividuaiton occurred from the prisoners it was not long the experiment completely broke down ethically. Zimbardo, who watched through cameras in an observation type room (warden), had to put an end to the experiment long before then he intended
These occurrences can be analyzed using social psychology because the environment, the situation, and those holding the authority influenced the behavior of others. Due to these influences, prisoners and guards acted on the roles they were given, in the way that society sees them. The description, in itself, is the definition of social psychology.
To begin the experiment the Stanford Psychology department interviewed middle class, white males that were both physically and mentally healthy to pick 18 participants. It was decided who would play guards and who would be prisoners by the flip of a coin making nine guards and nine prisoners. The guards were taken in first to be told of what they could and could not do to the prisoners. The rules were guards weren’t allowed t o physically harm the prisoners and could only keep prisoners in “the hole” for a hour at a time. Given military like uniforms, whistles, and billy clubs the guards looked almost as if they worked in a real prison. As for the prisoners, real police surprised them at their homes and arrested them outside where others could see as if they were really criminals. They were then blindfolded and taken to the mock prison in the basement of a Stanford Psychology building that had been decorated to look like a prison where guards fingerprinted, deloused, and gave prisoners a number which they would be calle...
An experiment by Zimbardo provided insight on how a regular person changes roles when placed within a specific social setting. The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by Zimbardo strictly on a volunteer basis “to study the process by which prisoners and guards ”learn” to become compliant and authoritarian (732).” The study was intended to be done over a two week period however the volunteers became so caught up in being a prisoner or a guard that it was actually cut short. Both prisoners and guards jumped immediately into the roles given. The guards set out to prove their superiority and the prisoners after a brief attempt to overthrow the guards fell into obedience. Guard A originally states that he is a “pacifist and nonaggressive”, but by day three he portrays just the characteristics he claims to have none of (Zimbardo 741). The guards in the experiment were told to keep the prisoners in-line, they did so to their own accord. The prisoners in the experiment also in the end gave in to the rules of the authoritarian figures. Both the guards and the prisoners did what they felt they needed to do to survive throughout the experiment. So even though t...
More specifically, the movie A Few Good Men depicts the results of blindly obeying orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, also explores obedience to authority in his essay “ The Perils of Obedience”. On the other hand, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, focused on disobedience to authority in his essay “ Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Milgram wrote about how people were shockingly obedient to authority when they thought they were harming someone else while Fromm dissected both: why people are so prone to obey and how disobedience from authoritative figures can bring beneficial changes for society. Obeying commands, even when they go against our morals, is human nature; Disobeying commands, however, is challenging to do no matter what the situation is.
From an American Psychologist. Vol. 19, pp. 848-852, 1964.
In conclusion, correctional officers such as Ted Conover may think they hold all the power but due to the sudden increase in prisoners and not enough staff, the officers are starting to see how difficult it is to obtain power. The Stanford Prison Experiment also gives us a good sense of the change of power that goes on in a correctional facility and how sometimes the prisoners hold power over the guards. And lastly, inmate power can be seen through the contraband that is made/ brought in on a regular basis.
Obedience is a widely debated topic today with many different standpoints from various brilliant psychologists. Studying obedience is still important today to attempt to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre happened so society can learn from them and not repeat history. There are many factors that contribute to obedience including situation and authority. The film A Few Good Men, through a military court case, shows how anyone can fall under the influence of authority and become completely obedient to conform to the roles that they have been assigned. A Few Good Men demonstrates how authority figures can control others and influence them into persuading them to perform a task considered immoral or unethical.
The guards were given very little prompting in what their job was to entail, and so they were able to create their own ideas and ethos of what the model prison guard should be like. The guards, using this new power given to them, ruled over the prisoners with an iron fist, exacerbating the already present issues that the test environment had brought. However, the guards and the prisoner had no clear differences between each other before the experiments beginning, in fact, the process of choosing who would play which role was entirely random. As a result, we saw two not incredibly dissimilar groups of individuals take on very different roles in the days that followed, simply because that was what the new lay of the land had called
We have been taught that we should always follow our priorities, whether it is dealing with jobs, families, education, or faith. Ethical egoism teaches us that if our interests are any one these or something else, we should put it first because these are our values. But how far should we go in protecting our values? Is there a limit of how they should be protected? Am I doing what’s best for my priorities or for me? Although we should protect our values, there needs to be a limit and a focus of how I should protect my values with the best intentions. The film, Prisoners, presents this moral dilemma of torture through the characters’ decisions and emotions.