Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your parent tells you to get something from the kitchen, and you get it without asking them any further questions or denying their order altogether? Alternatively, have you found yourself in a situation with friends where someone tells you to get them something, but because you don't want to, you turn around and say no? What behaviours are considered to be obedient?
- We will first talk about what obedience is.
- Next, we will look at obedience within psychology.
- We will then discuss blind obedience, with respect to Milgram's experiment.
- After that, we will explore the different explanations for obedience.
- Finally, we will understand what the difference between obedience and conformity is.
Obedience: Definition
Obedience rests on the assumption that one would not react to a direct order from another individual if one did not consider them to be an authority figure. Keeping this in mind, what is obedience?
Obedience is a specific type of social influence where people are explicitly told what to do by an authority figure. If this is considered legitimate by the individual under question, they will obey; if not, then they won't.
Let's try and clarify this with another example.
As a child, you consider your parent(s) to be an authority figure in your life, so when they tell you to do something, you do so, i.e., sticking to curfew, cleaning your room, doing chores etc. At the same time, you're aware that if you don't obey them, then your parent(s) can, and often will, punish you.
Fig. 1 Social influence would say that police officer have powerObedience in Psychology
How does one know if a human will or won't display a specific behaviour in response to a command or instructions? Is it just part of some peoples' nature, or do particular circumstances determine whether people will obey?
We all know that millions of people were killed in Nazi Germany although not solely by the hand of Hitler himself. This begs the question, what made people follow orders to the extent that they did? Was it fear, or was it their personality trait?
In psychology, obedience to an authority figure comes from the fact that the person obeying believes that the command being made is legitimate, and they can be punished if they don't obey. This kind of authority figure is known as a legitimate authority.
There are two types of obedience, namely constructive obedience and destructive obedience.
Constructive obedience means one's obedient behaviour benefits a social group or individual.
On the other hand,
Destructive obedience produces adverse outcomes for the individual or the social group.
How does this manifest in a real-life example?
Cooperating with first responders or obeying laws is considered constructive obedience whereas if police shoot innocent people or if people obey discriminatory laws, this would be an example of destructive obedience.
Blind Obedience
Sometimes, you may find yourself in situations where you know what your authority figure is telling you to do is wrong, for example, driving past a red light, but you do so anyway-- this is a real-life example of blind obedience.
Blind obedience is when individuals do what they are told to, regardless of what they believe is ethically, morally or legally correct.
We can understand this more by looking at Milgram's Shock Experiment (1963)¹.
Milgram's Shock Experiment (1963)
Participants were told that they would be asking another individual about a list of words to recall to test memory. However, the other individual was working with the researcher, which the participants were unaware of. They were required to give an electric shock to the individual if he gave an incorrect answer (although no shock was really given) and were also told that the intensity of the shock had to increase with each wrong answer; in total, there were 30 levels, with the last level resulting in death.
Since the individual being asked to recall words was the researcher's accomplice, he would pretend to react every time a shock was supposedly administered.
The volunteer would complain of pain and discomfort and express how they didn't want to continue the experiment any longer.
Fig. 2 - Milgram's experiment showcased the social influences of obedience
To keep the experiment going, the researcher would urge the participant to continue by saying things one of the following -
- "Please continue."
- "The experiment requires you to continue."
- "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
- "You have no other choice but to continue."
His idea was to see to what extent the participants would obey an authority figure if they knew that they were intentionally causing someone distress.
His results showed that out of 40 participants, 25 reached the end! Further, 90% of these participants reached the level where the accomplice would pretend to faint. This showed that the participants obeyed the researcher's commands to continue, all while feeling high levels of stress and "harming" another individual.
Try putting yourself in the participants' shoes - would you continue the experiment if you knew that your actions hurt someone? Probably not. What if you were told that you would have no liability and everything would be the researcher's responsibility? Maybe your answer will change.
You might now be wondering why and how participants obeyed up to the point that they did. Let's look at some explanations for obedience.
Explanations for Obedience
How can we explain obedience and what occurred in Milgram's experiments?
Agentic State
The results of Milgram's experiments showed that if the researcher reminded the participants that they would not be liable for their actions and that he would take all the responsibility, the participants continued to obey. This can be considered an example of the agency theory.
The agency theory states that people are more likely to obey an authority figure if they believe that the authority figure will take responsibility for the individual's actions.
In Milgram's subsequent investigations, when it was suggested that the participants would be taking responsibility and not the authority figure as was thought, it was found that they refused to obey.
Legitimacy of Authority
Society is hierarchical in the sense that teachers, parents, police or law officers are above us. This authority is legitimate, causing us to obey them when we are told to do or not to do something. In Milgram's experiment, the researcher is considered a legitimate authority since he has a background in science, which most non-specialists wouldn't. Therefore, the level of obedience is higher than if he were not considered legitimate.
Situational Variables
Situational variables include the authority figure's uniform, location, and proximity.
Uniform
The researcher in Milgram's experiment wore a lab coat, which usually indicates that someone is an expert in the field of science and research, thereby giving them a higher status - one of a legitimate authority figure. In his subsequent experiment, where he ensured that the researcher was wearing regular clothes, the level of obedience dropped significantly.
Location
In simple terms, location refers to where the obedient behaviour needs to be carried out. In the case of Milgram's experiment, the location was Yale University, one of the most prestigious universities in America. Its high credibility towards scientific research gained respect from the participants, thus increasing their likelihood to obey.
To test this, Milgram carried out the same experiment in a set of run-down offices. He noticed that obedience levels dropped to 47.5%, suggesting that the location where one is told to obey has an impact.
The proximity of Authority Figure
The proximity of the authority figure refers to how close a person is to the individual.
If a police officer is next to you when he catches you speeding on the road, you are more likely to obey his order to pay a fine or provide him with the documents he is asking for.
In Milgram's experiment, the researcher was in the same room as the participant, which could have contributed to the level of obedience noted. When he replicated this study, the researcher was in another room urging participants to continue the experiment via telephone - this small change resulted in obedience falling to 20.5%!
Dispositional Explanation: Authoritarian Personality
While Milgram explained obedience by the factors discussed above, Adorno (1950)² argued that it was an individual's personality as opposed to their environment that causes obedience. This personality came to be known as the authoritarian personality.
The authoritarian personality agrees with an authoritarian social system and appreciates obedience to authority figures.
By studying around 2,000 American, white, middle-class families' attitudes to fascist beliefs and behaviours, he investigated authoritarian personalities using the F-scale.
High scores on the F-scale usually indicated that participants associated more with 'strong' people and were hostile to 'weak' people.
Those with an authoritarian personality were more likely to be willing to obey those they viewed as higher or more authoritarian than them but were more openly hostile to those they regarded as beneath them.
Difference between Obedience and Conformity
Although they're both types of social influence, conformity doesn't require instruction, but obedience does. When you clean your room on your own accord because you know your parents expect you to keep a room tidy, that is conformity. However, if you clean your room because you're being told to do it, that is obedience.
Let's take a look at the table below to understand the key areas in which obedience and conformity differ³.
Obedience | Conformity |
| When obeying someone, you are following an order. | When conforming to a situation, you are altering your behaviour. |
| When obeying someone, that someone is of a higher status, i.e., an authority figure. | When conforming, you are going along with people of the same status. |
| Obedience is dependent on social power, i.e., the power the authority figure holds over you. | Conformity is dependent on the need to be socially accepted. |
Therefore, we can see that while obedience and conformity can often be confused for one or the other, there are clear differences that set them apart.
Obedience - Key takeaways
- Obedience is a specific type of social influence where people are explicitly told what to do by an authority figure.
- Obedience is of two types: constructive and destructive.
- Blind obedience is when individuals do what they are told to, regardless of what they believe is ethically, morally or legally correct. This can be explained by Milgram's shock experiment (1963).
- Explanations for obedience include agentic state, legitimacy of authority, situational variables, i.e., location and proximity of the authority figure, and the authoritarian personality.
- The main difference between conformity and obedience is that conformity doesn't require an instruction or an order, whereas obedience does.
References
- Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.
- Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row (pp. 228).
- Stangor C, Jhangiani R, Tarry H. Principles of Social Psychology. Victoria: BC campus Open Textbook Project; 2014.
- Fig 2. Milgram's experiment (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Milgram_experiment_v2.svg) by Fred the Oyster (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fred_the_Oyster) licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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