Obedience in social psychology - Essay Example

?Running Head: Obedience in Social Psychology Obedience in Social Psychology [Institute’s Obedience to ity is one of the most pressing matters of the 20th and 21st century. Events such as the Holocaust and Abu Ghraib prison tortures have caused us to ask questions regarding the humanity within each one of us. Social Psychologists have delved into this and have conducted experiments, the results of which have been astonishing. The aim of this research paper is to try and answer whether obedience really is a desirable thing or is the cost of being obedient, much too great to pay. Obedience in Social Psychology When a person changes their behaviour at the command of an authoritative figure, it is termed as being obedient and research shows that it is generally accepted and usually encouraged. By definition, obedience is "a social influence process involving modification of behaviour in response to a command from an authority figure" (Bordens and Horowitz, pp. 289, 2002). It is a necessity when it comes to maintaining order in society. Laws are placed to be followed by citizens to ensure the safety of themselves as well as those around them to maintain social harmony, for example commuters, following traffic laws, ensure the smooth and safe passage of others around them and had there been no obedience to those laws, then the occurrence of traffic collisions would have been much higher. Obedience is also essential in class rooms and at home, where children learn to obey their elders in matters of etiquettes and overall socially acceptable behaviour. A varying level of obedience is required in all sorts of social interactions, without which the result would be anarchy which would invariably lead to complete chaos. There is, however, another side to obedience called 'destructive obedience' which refers to when individuals or groups have been ordered to carry out morally unacceptable actions such as rape, destruction of property and even murder. Eichmann's Fallacy It is usually assumed that evil individuals are responsible for evil actions, however what is most disturbing about 'destructive obedience', is that it challenges the basic assumptions of humanity and what normal humans are capable off. It is from that assumption that 'Eichmann's fallacy' derives its name from. When Adolf Eichmann (one of the architects of the Holocaust) was brought to trial in Israel, his appearance baffled the social critic Hannah Arendt, who was in awe of the man’s appearance. Eichmann was a short, bald man whose only motivation was to please his superiors to make way for his promotion. He appeared to have no hatred for the Jewish people but obeyed his orders, as it was part of his job. By the end of the trial, Arendt came to accept Eichmann's defense, even though Eichmann was convicted and later hanged, and concluded that evil is essentially common and is often carried out by normal people, much to the surprise of many of her colleagues (Ardent, pp 253-279, 1965). Eichmann was not the only officer who tried to defuse the responsibility for his actions on to his superiors; numerous other Nazi officers used the same defense. This phenomenon was quite bizarre as people were not willing to accept that someone would carry out mass executions merely on the say so of some authoritative figure. The trial of Adolf Eichmann was also the source of inspiration for one of the most famous psychological experiment ever done. The Milgram Experiment When Adolf Eichmann claimed that, he was only carrying out orders, when he planned and carried out the mass execution of Jews during the holocaust. “Stanley Milgram, a professor of Social Psychology at Yale” (Milgram, pp. 371-378, 1963) decided to carry out an experiment, which began just three months after the commencement of Eichmann's trial, which sought to find out the link between authority and obedience. The experiment consisted of three roles, the teacher (played by the subject), the learner and a scientist (both played by an actor). There was a draw in which both the subject and the actor took out slips of papers to determine who would be the teacher and learner respectively, however, the draw was rigged so as to make sure the subject would become the teacher every time. The premise of the experiment was as follows: The teacher was to give the learner an electrical shock, with increments of 15v, for each wrong answer, from a shock machine with 30 switches ranging from 15-450 volts (Milgram, pp. 371-378, 1963), the subjects were also given a small shock to give them a sense of what the learner would be feeling and were assured it was harmless, though painful. The subjects were being paid four dollars for their time and the purpose given to the subject was to find the link between memory retention and pain. In reality, the learner was not hooked onto the machine and a recording was played in which the learner pretended to get shocked. Before carrying out the experiment, Milgram had asked fourteen seniors doing their majors in psychology from Yale about how many would reach 450v and the response was that almost all believed that only a small percentage (average 1.2%) would do so. However, the results were quite different, it turned out that approximately 65% of the subjects (26 out of 40) went on to deliver the fatal shock of 450v after being pressured enough by the scientist, who was portraying the authoritative figure. This experiment was carried out in various countries with the result roughly matching the same as the original (Milgram, pp. 371-378, 1963). The Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by Philip Zimbardo (2008, pp. 23-46), a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. The purpose of the experiment was to find out whether the individual personality traits of prisoners and guards were the reason for the abuses carried out within prisons. In particular, 24 students were selected, who were found to be the most psychologically stable, and were kept in a mock prison environment, created in the basement of the Stanford University Department of Psychology (2008, pp. 23-46), with some playing the roles of guards while others playing prisoners. The experiment, which was to last for two weeks, was stopped after only six days due to the abuses and psychological torture which was carried out by the guards, at times even in the presence of Zimbardo himself. These abuses include name calling, locking up of prisoners in small dark rooms and making the prisoners carry out make believe sexual acts. The result of the experiment astonished, as one-third of the guards displayed genuine tendencies of sadism while prisoners suffered from trauma, which led to the removal of five prisoners (2008, pp. 59-71). These experiments were done during a time when people were having a hard time understanding the atrocities which were committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Milgram's experiments showed that with enough pressure applied by an authoritative entity, even common men and women can be pushed to carry out unspeakable actions. In 1974, Milgram wrote an article titled "The Perils of Obedience" in which he concurred with the views of Arendt, saying that the prosecution was fundamentally wrong in trying to make Eichmann look like a monster, for he was simply a bureaucrat doing his job. He stated that when ordinary people are asked to do acts, which go against their standards of morality, they can become part of destructive processes for few have the resources to resist a powerful authoritative figure. In his book, "The Lucifer Effect" (2008), Philip Zimbardo explained how the Stanford Prison experiment showed that evil was something that took form of the roles that people were expected to play and gave examples of the abuses carried out at the Abu Ghraib prison, to state that institutionalized unaccountability can corrupt even the most pious one amongst us. Social Psychology has draw out for us both the positives and the negatives of obedience. Too much and we are in danger of falling in a state of totalitarianism, whereas if we do not obey anyone we fall into the state of anarchy. Obedience is an indispensable quality that has been instilled within us from birth. It is essential to the maintain the social fabric of hierarchy, upon which the society functions, but one must remember that it is within them to choose to obey, keeping the bigger picture of humanity in mind and to make sure not to fall into the pitfalls of 'destructive obedience' which can have disastrous effects. References Arendt, Hannah. 1965. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. The Viking Press. Bordens, Kenneth S., Horowitz, Irwin A. 2002. Social Psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Milgram, Stanley. 1963. "Behavioral Study of obedience." The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Volume 67, Issue 4, pp. 371-378. Milgram, Stanley. 1974. "The Perils of Obedience." Harper's Magazine. Volume 1974. Zimbardo, Philip G. 2008. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Random House Trade Paperbacks. Read More