Download Why do people obey authority

Why do people obey authority?
Explaining why people obey authority is a complex issue that looks not only to hierarchy
and authority as commonplace in everyday society, but also to how individual states of
mind change when confronted by figures of perceived “legitimate” authority. Obedience
occurs due to antecedent conditions and “binding factors” denoted by social norms, in
other words, because we are primed by social life and by the development of human
society to respect authority. Obedience is further instilled when people respond to
perceived figures of legitimate authority, within a situation that also has ideological
justification. Looking at situations where people resist authority through disobedience
further illustrates the precedents for obedience and the perceived costs of dissent. The
study of obedience to authority, although sharing in common aspects from other forms of
social influence, is however distinctive in its process and in the way in which it motivates
individual’s compliance. Unlike compliance or conformity within group processes,
obedience has a public perception of being involuntary and is an explicit and overt form of
social influence in which people fully believe in the legitimacy of external authority itself, as
opposed to the more voluntary forms of social influence such as conformity to a majority,
in which an individual acts according to normative and informational influences. Although
obedience shares aspects in common with other forms of social influence with regards to
how behaviour impacts on interpersonal relationships, the subjective reasons for why
people feel they have to be obedient necessitates a different approach in its explanation.
In a seminal study on obedience to authority, Stanley Milgram explained the high rates of
obedience within several experiments involving a teacher/learner paradigm whereby a
naïve subject is instructed by an authority to carry out a morally dubious act, as deriving
from antecedent conditions such as the innate tendency to accept authority as a social
norm (Milgram, 1974). Obedience has deep roots in human behaviour and the history of
social life and activity, when it is considered that a major step in the evolutionary process
was the capacity for individuals to accept their position in a hierarchy and thereby facilitate
the division of labour. This degree of social organization not only ensured human survival
by allowing for more effective achievement of external goals, but is also a way in which
individuals stabilize social relationships within a group and maintain harmonious
relationships. For a significant part of an individual’s life, they are expected to accept and
respect the authority of others within different hierarchical systems, originating within the
family but also found in institutionalized organizations of authority such as schools and
workplaces. With the internalization of obedience to authority also comes the notion of a
system of rewards and punishments for obedience and deviance respectively. Although in
some cases people are shown to obey authority irrespective of whether the person in
authority has the capacity to punish or reward the individual in any significant way, there
is nevertheless a received sense that deviance and dissent will be associated with negative
consequences, for example the retribution of parents or of a teacher. The antecedent
conditions and the perception of obedience as an everyday social norm must therefore be
considered as a major factor in the process of obeying authority, as an internalized model
of self regulation and regulation of the relationships with others in a hierarchy. Studies
from group processes and particularly the role of normative influences within the dual
processes model that motivate majority conformity may also prove useful in analyzing the
reasons for accepting authority; “binding factors” such as a desire to be polite and to avoid
the awkwardness of withdrawing from orders and thereby risking one’s own interpersonal
relationship with an authority figure may further add to the individual’s desire to remain
obedient through social anxiety.
However, the reasons why people accept authority cannot simply be reduced to the
influence of social norms, as for obedience to occur it is necessary for the individual to
firstly identify the figure of authority, and in particular to recognize them as having the
legitimate power to have the right to exercise their authority. Social influence is unable to
operate without a basis of power. In a primitive and extreme sense, the influence that
compels people to obey authority may derive from the power to reward or punish. If an
individual is aware that there are definite negative outcomes for deviation and or positive
outcomes for obedience, they will be inclined through personal fear to obey the will of the
authority. This form of social influence is also operative in compliance, when the outward
behaviour of an individual is affected although there is no conversion to a belief in the
legitimacy of one’s own actions and the orders from authority. Although this scenario I may
be common, there are often other more subtle and interesting examples of how obedience
as a process of social influence does not necessarily rely on the power to reward or punish.
There is a correlation between the ability to exert influence and one’s position in the
social structure or hierarchy, assumedly because one reaches high ranking positions of
leadership by having the right attributes to function as an authority within that structure.
People perceive legitimate authority when they assume that a person has a high-ranking
position, and therefore holds greater expertise and a right to exercise authority within his
domain. In the context of Milgram’s experiments, the figure of the experimenter would be
perceived as a legitimate authority from the assumption that they are in control of the
operation, and have a greater knowledge about the experiment’s inner workings and value
than the subject. Although accepting reward and punishment as “public” forms of influence,
French and Raven (1959) also identified other types of psychological influence, such as
legitimate and expert influence, that act particularly in the process of obedience to
authority.
In a sense, people therefore obey authority when it has a contextually legitimate source.
Obedience, at least in a willing form, may also be reliant on the individual’s perception of
the legitimacy or value of the situation in general. This “ideological justification” extends
the notion of legitimate authority to a more general belief in the legitimacy of the context of
the task, for example if it is in the interests of beneficial scientific discovery or if by carrying
out a set of orders they are benefitting a particular group of people. Initial obedience rests
on this perception of legitimacy that justifies the right of an authority to be obeyed
(Milgram. 1974).
These antecedent conditions are important for establishing the process of obedience of
authority and may in many situations be a substantial enough a basis by which people obey
and continue to obey authority, for example if the tasks do not conflict with the individual’s
own views of morality. If the situation is one which does conflict with one’s personal values
however, there are other mechanisms employed to explain persistence within the task.
Once individuals have accepted the legitimacy of authority and a normative expectation
that they are required to obey orders that may seem ethically dubious, they can be seen to
adjust their mindset to the situation whereby they become immersed in the maintaining a
positive interaction between themselves and the figure of authority. Rather than
concentrating on the potential consequences of the task at hand, the obedient subject is at
pains to carry out technical orders as well as possible; their moral compass shifts from
concentration between themselves and the consequences of their actions, to the
relationship between themselves and the authority figure. The reasons why the individual
continues to remain obedient are partly due to their perception of legitimate authority; the
orders have come from a higher, impersonal authority that knows what is best, and so the
subject’s position should not be to let his own conscience or the potential dissent for others
try and interfere. This “agentic state” of continued obedience is also, however, due to the
diminished sense of self image and personal responsibility as a simple agent acting out the
wishes of a higher authority. In a similar vein to theories such as Le Bon and other
psychodynamic frameworks, obeying orders with shockingly immoral consequences can be
explained in terms of the individual becoming anonymous and regressing to more antisocial impulses, sanctioned by a legitimate authority (Turner, 1991). Other theories from
group processes, such as the way people experience deindividuation when personal
responsibility is diffused in crowds, may also be applied in a situation where the obedient
subject considers himself just to be a part of a greater hierarchy (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005).
Studies on obedience have shown that the rates for obedience in these situations are
nevertheless subject to certain conditions under which orders are carried out. Milgram
varied, for example, factors such as the proximity of the experimenter relative to the
teacher in a series of experiments. These findings showed obedience levels dropped
sharply when subjects were in the physical presence of the authority figure, suggesting that
people are more likely to be obedient in conflicting situations when they are closely
monitored. This shares similarities with, for example, Latane’s social impact theory, which
suggests that immediacy of the social influence in group situations is a significant factor in
compliance and conformity (Turner, 1991). Despite the fact that the individual may see the
justified legitimacy of obedience to authority, they are nevertheless also guided to
obedience by the strength and immediacy of the authority figure.
Although the situation in which many obedience studies have been carried out cannot be
said to reflect everyday experiences of obedience to authority (i.e. being commanded to act
against one’s own basic values and morals by a figure of authority), the instances why and
how people also dissent from and disobey authority may further illuminate which
particular factors bind people to obedience initially. The main reason why people find it
difficult to disobey authority goes back to the wish to preserve relations with the figure of
authority and to maintain the equilibrium of the hierarchical order. By dissenting or
disobeying, the individual risks potential punishment or seeming rude by undermining the
legitimate authority and thus causing strain and conflict within the hierarchical
relationship. Within Milgram’s experiments where the experimenter was replaced by a
“normal” person, levels of obedience sharply decreased, showing that the hierarchical
nature that operates in obedience to authority is a strong factor in preventing people
risking dissent or disobedience (Milgram, 1974).
Other experiments, which measured levels of obedience to a single authority in group
situations, also illustrates the factors which bind individuals to obedience. In situations
where the subject served an ancillary function rather than direct acting out the contentious
orders of an authority, obedience rates were measured at over 90% (Milgram, 1974). This
illustrates how increased distance and diffusion of responsibility corresponds with a
heightened likelihood of obedience. However, in experiments where the other members of
the group disobeyed authority by opting out of the experiment but remained in the same
room, there were vast reductions in the rates of obedience. In this scenario, the individual
perceived a reduction in the power of the authority figure to exert social influence, and so
was more inclined to be disobedient likewise. This group situation also demonstrates how
an increased sense of personal responsibility and consciousness of one’s own self image
absolved the individual from his commitment to the impersonal orders of the authority.
Whereas before the individual indulged in assuming that the hierarchy of command knew
better than him about the value of the experiment, by comparing his behaviour with that of
the others there is a reinforcement of social norms and expected behaviour. Similarities
within the obedience process may therefore be drawn from Festinger’s social comparison
theory (1954); in novel situations in particular, people are more likely to evaluate
themselves and their behaviour relative to similar others. While a subject may be obedient
on his own, when he evaluates his subordinate position relative to a figure of authority, in
the presence of similar subjects, he may begin to evaluate his own behaviour more in line
with that of the dissenting participants (Fraser et al., 2001).
A criticism that may be leveled at Milgram’s research and other studies that look in to
obedience to authority would be the ecological validity of the experiment’s outcomes. It is
arguably a very rare situation to find oneself compelled to act out highly contentious and
immoral acts by an authority in the person of a scientific experimenter, and so perhaps
limits the research’s usefulness when looking at everyday examples of obedience
(especially considering that academic fascination with obedience to authority has its roots
in explaining abnormal atrocities such as the Holocaust). However, these studies
nevertheless provide us with some basic reasons for general obedient behaviour. We are
obedient to authority because it is an integral part of society, providing social organization
and regulation of relationships, to the extent that it has been internalized as a norm. Our
perceptions of what constitutes a legitimate authority figure and an appropriate situation
to act obediently lead us to believe in the obligatory nature of obeying authority, and
motivates out persistence with ordered tasks. The costs of dissent and disobedience
thereby have large psychic and social consequences; a possibility that the relationship will
be fragmented by conflict, that our own self-image will be tarnished and the potential
possibility of retribution if we do not comply. Even in cases where we are do not obey
authority there comes with it a fear of what may happen as a consequence. Although
obedience and group processes share in common, for example, a desire to maintain a
balance and cohesion between relationships, the dynamic of hierarchy within an authoritysubject relationships makes the type of social influence far more overt, involuntary and
externally constraining.
Bibliography
Fraser, C., Burchell, B., Hay, D. and Duveen, G. (2001). Introducing social psychology.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hogg, M.A., & Vaughan, G.M. (2005) Social psychology: An introduction.
Turner, J.C. (1991). Social influence. Open University Press.
Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to authority. Harper & Row.