Why do we obey authority?

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Merroney Williams                Humanities Access Course

Why do we obey authority?

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 at Yale University under conditions that would imply stark authority and he presumed that this would evoke the strongest moral imperatives against hurting others.

He introduced a further participant, who was in fact an accomplice actor.  The participants drew lots to determine who would be the learner and who would be the teacher.  Brantt drew the teacher role, and the actor, the learner role.  Brantt was unaware that the roles had been fixed.  The lesson was to learn a verbal task and the teacher administered a shock each time the learner got the answer wrong.  The shock was increased by one increment every time a wrong answer was given.  The learner was strapped to a chair which was connected to a very imposing looking ‘shock generator’ which ranged between 15 volts and 450 volts.  On the generator the words labeled the shock gage from ‘slight shock’ to ‘DANGER: SEVERE SHOCK’.  In fact, although it appeared to, the generator did not emit any electrical shock at all.  The actor was instructed to cry out at 150 volts and intensify the level of verbal reaction as the volts increased.  At 300 volts he was instructed to pound on the wall, later ceasing to reply or make any further noise.   No response to a question was seen to be a wrong answer, therefore the teacher would be told to carry on shocking.  The study was to be watched by the experimenter (the figure of authority who would order the teacher to continue to the end).

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Brantt responded as Milgram had predicted.  She was calm and cool.  Once she had passed the ‘slight shock’ level she queried the continuation of the study and later refused to continue in a firm calm manner.  She was not tense or nervous but straightforward, courteous in her behaviour and took total control of her actions.  This implied that disobedience is a simple and rational deed.

Milgram believed that all of his participants would react this way and predicted that only 4% would reach 300 volts.

Milgram then advertised for forty men from various ages and occupations that ...

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