After reading this article you will learn about: 1. Meaning of Obedience 2. Causes of Obediency 3. Milgram’s Experiment.
Meaning of Obedience:
Obedience simply means to obey. It is a tendency to accept and agree to the requests and orders of persons of authority. Whom one obeys and why he obeys? In a society of mutual trust and respect, juniors obey seniors, students obey their teachers employees obey employers, subordinates obey the boss, and superiors family members obey the head of the family, inferiors obey superiors and low socio-economic class people obey high social class people, women obey men, socially and economically disadvantaged obey the socially and economically advantaged, dominant is obeyed by the submissive, and that is the social norm, that is the rule of society, that is the order of the day. The less powerful and weak obeys the more powerful and physically strong one.
Thus obedience as a human value and as a quality required for socialization is a much talked term in our daily life. A disobedient person is not liked anywhere. He cannot adjust with the circumstances of life in healthy way if he is disobedient. The child from the early state is taught to obey the advice and instructions of his senior family members, teachers and respectable persons of the society.
Disobedient persons face a lot of difficulties in their day to day life. Obedience specifically deals with the response to authority.
Obedience is a type of social influence where in people try to accept, agree and respect the request and order of another person. This request or order brings a change in their behaviour. The most significant characteristic of obedience is that it is the most direct way through which a person tries to change the behaviour of another person through orders, verbal or non verbal.
A father orders his child of 6 yrs. to stop viewing cartoon network and go to study. If the child accepts his father’s order and goes to study he is said to obey his father. In another situation a boy of 10 years asks the permission of his father to join a cricket team as a player. Father says a big ‘No’ to him. But he secretly joins the team without accepting his father’s order. This is disobedience.
In an order the person is just told what to do. A person is transferred from a big college to a small one. He does not obey the order of government. This is disobedience. Another obeys and proceeds to his new place of work, this is obedience. A person who has clear authority and control over another person, he can only give an order to someone to obey it.
In certain jobs where discipline among the workers is emphasized or given top priority like army, air force, police, business, obedience is considered as a basic requirement. While choosing people for these jobs it is examined whether the person is obedient or stubborn. Disobedient persons are not appointed in jobs requiring discipline of the first order.
When a person shows obedience to the social norm and accepts what is told to him to do, he is accepted as a disciplined worker. Disobedient persons are said to be indisciplined. People having the authority to command usually give orders and others working under them have to obey these orders and act accordingly.
People obey a person or rule when it has the power to give punishment. Orders of strong and powerful people, people with power and authority are obeyed by weak and less powerful people, who have less authority or power in the society.
If a person disobeys one with power and authority he is awarded various punishments like bad entry in C.C.R, transfer, fines, stoppage of increments and promotions and finally may be and termination demotion.
But even sometimes persons without authority and power to award punishment, and people who are strangers command orders on submissive persons and produce high levels of obedience in others. Milgram conducted a number of experiments to find out the existence of evidence if any, infavour of the above view i.e., whether individuals would obey commands from a relatively powerless stranger.
In order to examine this view and to explore the nature of obedience he designed an experiment similar to those used by Arnold Buss to study human aggression. In this study Milgram took some participants who were told that they could deliver electric shocks to another person each time, he committed an error on a task of learning. This shock was to be administered by means of an equipment.
The purpose of this experiment of Milgram was to find out whether the ‘S’ would obey or refuse to obey when ordered to give the victim (who commits errors) an extremely dangerous electronic shock. The participants were also ordered to raise the level of shock each time the learner made an error. If they refused, they were ordered to raise the level of shock by the experimenter.
Milgram wanted to find out if they would do as they were told and obey the order or command. The participants in this experiment were volunteers and were paid in advance for their work. The experimenter had no control over them whatsoever and the experimenter had no power to punish them if they don’t obey.
So they had nothing to be afraid of if they would not have obeyed. But interestingly it was noted by Milgram that 65 per cent were fully obedient to the order of providing shock in case a mistake was committed, although they could hear the protest and cries of the victim from the room.
The findings of this study proves that people do what they are asked to do. Further, additional experiments conducted by Milgram also suggest that social support enables the person to disobey the commands and orders of the authority.
The pressure of a partner in Milgrams experiment on obedience, reduced, the proportion of obedient subjects to ten per cent. This indicates that support for defiance or disobedience usually helps attempts for resistance.
When a father orders the child not to see cartoon network or not to play, but to read, but the mother supports the child, the child is encouraged and does not give up seeing cartoon network, i.e, does not obey his father.
In our day to day life we come across many incidents where people behave in most disorganised and irresponsible manner by not obeying social norms, laws and regulations when they get social support or support from others.
If they are asked by the law and order authorities not to throw stones on persons or not to destroy public property, they don’t listen to it if they get support from others. Support from others plays a very significant role in determining the degree of obedience in a given situation.
In Milgram’s study it was observed that though the participants obeyed Milgrams instruction, at times many of them protested and expressed concern over the learners painful condition. But when again they were ordered to proceed, most of them obeyed it; probably because of the social influence of the experimenter.
From his study Milgram concluded that our social training cannot be counted on to prevent Malevolent authority from eliciting acts of brutality and in human treatment. Thus Milgram comments “A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.”
Findings similar to Milgram’s study on obediency have been obtained by Kilhan and Mann-1974 Shan and Yahya, 1977. These studies conducted in Jordan, Germany and Australia, which have different cultures and with both children and adults found that the tendency to obey commands from people without power and authority seems to be general in scope.
Causes of Obediency:
It is observed that several factors lie behind making a person accept and follow the commands of other or in simple terms, obey them.
One of such factors is lack of responsibility. In a mob situation so many people are engaged in mob behaviour and violence because they do not feel the responsibility of showing these indiscipline behaviour. They feel that since so many people are engaged in this violence.
I don’t have any individual responsibility. If anything will happen, it will be shared by everyone. So they obey the commands of that leader even though they feel that these are unlawful activities going against one’s conscience.
Similarly if a killer is asked to kill someone with the assurance that “if anything will happen, I will take the responsibility” the killer will obey the orders of the person. In Milgram’s study the experimenter assured the participants that he will be responsible for the well being of the learner.
Similarly when all the students of a class were ordered by the class teacher to give 5 slaps each on the face of a girl who did not do her home work, the students obeyed it because they thought that their teacher would take the responsibility if something happens and not they.
Thus lack of responsibility leads to obedience of commands and orders. Similarly in the Police Dep’t, when an alleged criminal is interrogated and tortured by the junior police officers to get in to the truth, the junior police officers would say “I am only following the orders of my superiors and I will not be responsible if any untoward incident happens.”
This type of feeling of lack of responsibility motivates one to obey orders. Secondly, die person ordering or the person conducting the experiment must have real life prestige, dignity and authority. Society teaches man that persons having authority must be obeyed. Thus a five year old child obeys his parents but does not obey his care taker or maid servant.
Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience:
In the laboratory experiment of Milgram, the experimenter’s command were gradual in nature. The participants were ordered to gradually increase the degree of shock. His orders were gradual i.e., he moved one step at a time. In real life situations also we find the effect of gradual proceeding or gradual command to make obedience effective.
In our day to day life, we observe that to maintain law and order, or to save the country from the hands of the militants, first the higher officer asks the subordinate officer to arrest or capture the alleged criminal.
Then gradually they are ordered step by step, first to interrogate, and question. Then they are ordered to stop his meal and drinking water. If the goal is not achieved i.e., if the alleged criminal does to open his mouth and say who is behind all these notorious activities, then next step they are ordered to do is torture him and if it did not work, finally he may be beaten to death in the lock up.