Authority and Obedience
Thesis: We consciously or unconsciously obey authority in all
walks of life on a daily basis.
Obedience is when there is legitimate power, there is pressure to
comply. Compliance with that which is required by authority;
subjection to rightful restraint or control. Authority being the legal
or rightful power; a right to command or enforce obedience on another.
This essay shall discuss, explore and evaluate the explanations as to
why people obey authority.
After the Nazi's justified genocide by saying that they were simply
following orders, a psychologist named Stanley Milgram (1963) decided
to carry out a study to try to answer the question of how far
individuals would go with regards to obedience to orders.
According to Milgram, obedience is a basic element in the structure of
social life and that a system of authority is required in all communal
living. Whether or not this is an harmonious component, be it
responded to with defiance or submission, it is an imperative factor.
Milgram wrote that obedience was an 'ingrained behaviour tendency
which overrides all training in ethics, sympathy and moral conduct'.
Milgram used a trial case study which he claimed to the research
participant was to assess the effects of punishment on learning. But
the real aim of the study was to find out the extent to which people
will obey, which he would do through a series of deceptions.
His trial participant was a 31 year old female teacher called Gretchen
Brantt who worked as a Medical Technician at the Yale Medical School.
She had previously emigrated to the USA five years ago.
He chose to act out the study ...
... middle of paper ...
... an ingrained habit within us all, apart from minority exceptions such
as criminals and those who chose to rebel. Social equilibrium would be
difficult if not impossible if it were that we disobeyed all
authority. The presence of an authoritative person, such as a member
of the police force is enough to discourage a fight at a football
match or perhaps encourage one, should they not be present.
In conclusion, we consciously or unconsciously obey authority in all
walks of life on a daily basis. The intensity of that authoritative
presence can have dramatic effects on our behaviour and the level to
which we obey.
Bibliography.
Introductory Psychology - Malim & Birch 1998 Macmillan Press Ltd
'The Perils of Obedience' - Harper's Magazine abridged and adapted
from Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram 1974
“The villain of any story is often the most compelling character” –John Hodgman. Hodgman quotes here that often in a story the villain is known to be the most overpowering character. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Judge Danforth, due to his misuse of privilege as a naïve dignitary, is the most villainous character in the play. This creates the tragedy in Salem because his ill-judgement and desire for power leads to the deaths of the accused citizens who in reality are innocent.
In a series of experiments conducted from 1960 to 1963, American psychologist Stanley Milgram, sought to examine the relationship between obedience and authority in order to understand how Nazi doctors were able to carry out experiments on prisoners during WWII. While there are several theories about Milgram’s results, philosopher Ruwen Ogien uses the experiment as grounds for criticizing virtue ethics as a moral theory. In chapter 9 of Human Kindness and The Smell of Warm Croissant, Ogien claims that “what determines behavior is not character but other factors tied to situation” (Ogien 120). The purpose of this essay is not to interpret the results of the Milgram experiments. Instead this essay serves to argue why I am not persuaded by Ogien’s
In the movie “Blood In…Blood Out,” there are three young Chicano teens just trying to survive in a white man’s world. First, you have Paco, a rebellious teen that loves a fight, and is in a small East Los Angeles street gang called “Vatos Locos.” Then, there is his half brother Cruz, he is trying to stray away from the gang life by painting, however, he still is and hangs with the Vatos Locos. Lastly, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin, there is Miklo the cousin of Cruz and Paco, who ran away from his white father to reconect with his Mexican roots. The only problem is Miklo does not look Chicano, and the Mexican community, including Paco, have a hard time accepting him into the world he so much wants to be a part of. His friends call him names like “white boy” or “guero” to make fun of his skin. Miklo though, is determined to gain the respect of his peers, he decides that he too wants to be a “Vato Loco,” which doesn’t sit very well with Paco. He tells Miklo, “Do white boys get VL placas (tattoos)? No, it doesn’t happen. Unless…” and that’s where it all starts.
Describe the differences in the results between the groups in the study and support your description with examples from the study
...the data did not involve member checking thus reducing its robustness and enable to exclude researcher’s bias. Although a constant comparative method was evident in the discussion which improved the plausibility of the final findings. Themes identified were well corroborated but not declared was anytime a point of theoretical saturation Thus, the published report was found to be particularly strong in the area of believability and dependability; less strong in the area of transferability; and is weak in the area of credibility and confirmability, although, editorial limitations can be a barrier in providing a detailed account (Craig & Smyth, 2007; Ryan, Coughlan, & Cronin, 2007).
The article cites very little of the actual facts of the study making the claims harder to accept and more susceptible to critique. The study itself seems to have overlooked some added external effects and made some assumptions critical to the issue. One factor discussed in class is the size of the study and the people comprising the study. The study size is a decent study size of 37,000. However, the study does not specify some serious factors, such as family size, the structure of the family, the age of the participants and how long the study followed children.
In a seminal work, Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) coined the term authoritarian personality and stated that it was characterised by strong adherence to externally imposed conventional norms, as well as submission or obedience to the authorities that promote those norms. According to Adorno and colleagues, these behaviours are attempts to deal with various personal insecurities. Specifically, authoritar- ian individuals displace their own anxieties onto weak minority groups in their culture (e.g., ethnic and/or religious minorities) or onto people who deviate from social norms (e.g., homosexuals). Displacement is often accompanied by associated beliefs that are highly evaluative and rigid. Other characteristics of the authoritarian personality include a cynical view of mankind, cognitive and emotional inflexibility. A belief in the need for power and toughness, the tendency to act harshly towards nonconformists, opposition to subjective or imaginative tendencies, and an exaggerated concern with promiscuity. Adler (1965) re-examined the personality char- acteristics described by Adorno and colleagues and noted that the central trait of the authoritarian personality is the ‘‘will to power over others’’, which results in aggressive overcompensation for feelings of inferiority and insignificance. Contemporary research continues to rely on many of the conceptualisations and measures originated by Adorno and colleagues (Martin, 2001; Stone, Lederer, & Christie, 1993).
Most people would like to think that they would never do anything to intentionally hurt another human being. However history has shown that human nature does not always prevail with the best outcomes. The following experiments and real life events all reflect that human beings succumb to obedience even when common sense tells them that what they are doing is wrong. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram’s electric shock study, and the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib are reflections on the outcome of obeying a command regardless of the results and why someone would do so.
Introduction 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 neglected their conscience, reflecting how this can be destructive in real life experiences. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid, hence useless.
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.
Beginning in kindergarten, young children around the age of five would disrespect their parents and teachers because they would not know better. Later, beginning in the adolescent years, young adults would just push aside all authority in general to show that they do not wish. Eventually, by the time men and women would become full adults, they would begin to violate laws and regulations set by others, even the omnipotent government. Why do people rebel against authority?
The study consisted of a significant number of females compared to males, which makes it invalid to conclude that the findings support the general population. A strength was that participants were selected at random. By doing so, the study remained unbiased, thus making the results more credible.
Freedom and equality are intertwined with one another. Freedom is defined as the custom of being free, political independence, and the possession of civil rights. When reflecting upon the history of the twentieth century many people all over the world were not afforded the luxury of being born with freedom or born with equal rights. In most cases, those people were often oppressed or subjugated by various forms of systematic state sponsored authoritarianism and terror. In order to receive the freedom necessary to survive and the equality required to live a happy and successful life the oppressed people had to take action. Often times the action took on various forms such as, revolts or nonviolent campaigns. Because the governments reliance on authoritarianism and terror to control their citizens, often times revolts and/or nonviolent campaigns were the consequence. Therefore, any advances towards gaining freedom and equality cannot happen without some form of systematic state-sponsored authoritarianism and terror taking place first. It is no coincidence because the two phenomena are linked.
The central aim of this essay will be to support the legal-positivist that law and morality are strictly separable. In its simplest form many understand legal positivism to be the existence and content of law, which depends on social facts, and not on its merits. I will engage closely with the work of John Austin and his concept of law, which offered a developed and progressive piece of work from Bentham, focusing on Austin’s The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832) in order to demonstrate one of the earlier accounts of legal positivism. By exploring Austin’s theory of sovereignty, in which he outlines that in every state there exists an authority to which a large mass of citizens show compliance, I will address the consideration that
Although they are very closely related, power and authority are two different concepts. Power is needed in order to establish authority, yet it is also completely distinct from authority (Week 9 Study Notes).