Obedience To Authority

By Author: Henry Ford
Total Articles: 189
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Obedience is considered to be one of the basic elements that comprise structure of social life. Obedience refers to the aspect of conforming or not conforming to the laid down rules by the authority. In every society which has more than one member, there is a system of authority in place that defines how individuals relate to one another and how they carry out their daily activities. Any individual member of the society has an obligation, either by defiance or by submission, to set out rules that govern the society. Obedience is perceived as a deeply engrained behavior or tendency to respond to moral conduct of social ethics. Although obedience is considered a force that emanate from our morals, it is however influenced by external forces including authority and people we tend to associate with.
People tend to look at obedience in different ways. There are those who believe that they have to obey because the feel it is right to do so. On the other hand, there are those who feel that they have to obey because it is a command. For example, I have always wondered why children are likely to do everything correct when their ...
... parents are there but when they are alone you will find everything in a mess. There are many dimensions as far as obedience is concerned. In the same ways, workers in a production line are likely to work efficiently when their supervisor is there and relax when they are alone. While for others obedience must be adhered to, others argue that there must be a degree of reasoning before one obeys. In some societies, obedience is expected regardless of who issues the order. For example in military, order is considered bigger and important than individual who issues the order. This means that a military officer is expected to obey any order issues whether it is right or wrong. One is expected to question reasonability of the order only after it has been obeyed. The dilemma of submission to authority is old and ambiguous. The story of Abraham in the bible clearly illustrates how Abraham was supposed to obey an order that required him to sacrifice his only son. Put yourself in the shoes of Abraham, would you kill a person close to you just to obey? While human sacrifice is considered to be against the moral standing but Abraham obeyed God and went on to lay his child on alter before God substituted the sacrifice with a sheep. However, obedience is one of the fabrics that hold the society together and it is inherent in human conscience.
If we have to look at obedience in terms what elicits it, we have to dig deep and understand what causes individuals to obey. One day, I was watching a documentary on animal treatment. The documentary showed an African man who was riding on a cart pulled by two donkeys. The donkeys were moving slowly even as the man yelled at them. However, when he used his case, the donkeys started running up the hill. As I was reflecting on the documentary, I asked myself why the donkeys ran after they were canned. Did they run because they wanted to or because pain was inflicted? Looked in terms of obedience, it is evident that the donkeys obeyed only after they were canned. I asked myself; to what extent are individuals likely to obey out of their will? Can individuals obey when they are under the command of another person? All these questions can be answered from Migram’s experiment. An experiment by Milgram (1974) that looked into the way individuals are likely inflict pain on others showed that most people are likely to comply and administer pain. In the experiments that was arranged to feature a teacher and student, it was revealed that despite the teacher knowing that the electric chair was real and could electrocute the student they continued to administer electrocution. Every time the student failed to answer the question correctly, the teacher administered electrocution to a varying degree. The study found out that more than 60% of the experimental teacher could actually administer pain to their experimental student despite the fact that they knew students were being electrocuted.
The results of the study were interpreted through a theoretical framework that asserts that all individuals hold deeply aggressive instincts that continually press for expression. This theory holds that when individuals are placed in a situation where they have power over other people to an extent that they can punish that as the like, they tend to express all what is sadistic and bestial in their personality. The continued electrocution of their victims was explained as flow of potent aggressive tendencies which comprise parts of motivational life of a person. It shows that how drive to obedience can make turn humble individuals into beast. In essence, there is an important lesson that we can draw that following orders blindly can take away our personality and in pursuit of obedience, we become inhuman.
The results from the experiment showed that individuals were likely to inflict more pain when they are under an order that when they are acting on their free will. Like we had discussed earlier, individuals are likely to obey due to different reasons, while some people will obey on their will, others obey to follow orders. In this experiment, individuals who were acting on their own will did not inflict more pain until when the student glutted but those who were under orders inflicted more pain by going to electrocution beyond 75 volts. The fundamental lesson that could be learned from the study was that ordinary people, who do simple jobs without any hostility, might turn to be terrible destructive agents when they are under destructive process. The study showed that the subjects were working in order to satisfy the feeling of the experimenter. For example during the Nazi holocaust, most of the individual who were used to administer Cyclon-b in gas chamber justified their actions arguing that they were following orders. This implies that orders takes away the personality in people and can them into beasts. People can follow do something, not because they are willing to do it, but because they have been forced to obey an order.
If we take obedience to be a force of individual morals, then it is evident that individuals engage in rational thinking before obeying an order. Obedience that is forced by orders comes from innate human thinking. In my observations, I have noted that there things we are likely to comply with not because we have been commanded to do so. For example if we meet a child stranded on the way, we obey to their call and stop when they ‘excuse me’. Also, when an old woman asks for help to load a luggage on the boot of her car, we obey. This is not because we have been commanded to do so, but because we feel it is right to do so. In his work on disobedience as a psychological and moral problem (Fromm) argues that human conscious has an intuitive knowledge that tells them what is human and what is inhuman. Erich argues that while the cause of disobedience in the Garden of Aden as the cause of the troubles that man experience today, disobedience, in light of threats of current atomic age may be the main reason that will lead to destruction of man. Human poses authoritarian conscience (super ego) which still obeys outside power. In respect, there are two irrational and rational authorities. Example of rational authority is between student and teacher while irrational authority is between slave and master. In both cases, the authority of the person commanding it is obeyed but they are of two different nature.
Eirich argues that many individuals are prone to obey because they are looking for safety. As long as one is obedient to state, church or to a public opinion, one feels safe and protected. Obedience makes individual a part of the power system and hence feels bound to others while disobedience tends to alienate individual from others.
This means that for one to disobey, they must have courage to be alone, and to sin. The capacity of individual courage however depend son individual state of development. It is only when individuals are expected to get freedom by act of disobedience that they are likely to disobey. Historically obedience is linked to virtues while disobedience is identified with sin. While sheer force may be used to establish obedience, this is the threatened by the overthrow of such forces.
When we tell a child at the age of 36 months to give something, they may shrug their shoulders or start crying. They may a time give you want you want but only with a giggle. However, when they are four years old, they know that when you ask them to give you something they are supposed to oblige. The, how do individuals come to disobey? Is disobedience innate or learned? In his work on opinions and social pressure, Asch (1955) argues that the social group and social pressure have a lot of influence on individual obedience. In line with social learning theories, individual may form conformation or resistance to social norms. Social learning theories assert that people are influenced by those they interact with. In light of this, individual’s obedience or disobedience is influenced by the social pressure exerted by the groups they associate with. This means that when individuals associate with a group that is resistant to the authority, they are also likely to become disobedience and when they associate with individuals who are obedience to the authority, they are likely to be obedient. The social pressure and opinions of a social group that individual associate with therefore influence whether individuals are obedient or disobedient.

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