Obedience and Psychology

People carry out commands of an authority figure under certain conditions. They obey the commands because it is same as their personal opinion, or to be liked by the authority and peers, or when it is a compulsion i.e. they have no other way. And in certain conditions, they refuse to obey because of high self-esteem, i.e. when their personal values are stronger than authority. Also, they disobey when they think that their freedom of opinion is at threat (Stangor, 2010).

Human nature has stayed consistent over the years, despite the changes in thinking and lifestyle. This trend also applies to obedience of authority. People still have the similar patterns like 40 years ago when we consider Milgram’s Obidience Experiment and its replication later. This is also supported by the fact that when the level of authority or the pressure was decreased in the experiment, people were less harsh in the punishments (Stangor, 2010). That is to say, even when the influence was less, people still agreed to punish the “learner”.

Although authority studies are related with influence from a powerful entity and conformity study is related with influence of a group, they are related in some way. We can take the example of minority conformity in this regard. The minority in this sense can be the small group of people with strong opinion and persuasive ability, which is very much similar to an authority, where generally a minority influences the opinion of large number of people.

These experiments suggest that although we have our own intrinsic qualities, we are largely influenced by the situations. We generally want to interact with the group of our interest, and we may change our behavior in order to fit into it. Also, these changes are gradual i.e. we take some time to get conditioned to the new behavior or opinion (Britt, 2009).

References:

Britt, Michael (2009), Episode 97: Stanley Milgram Obedience Study Finally Replicated, Accessed: October 31, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2009/06/episode-97-stanley-milgram-obedience-study-finally-replicated/#ixzz1HOBFKZ9g

Stangor, Charles (2010), Introduction to Psychology, Psychology in our social live, p. 449-453