Psychology behind Obedience

Are you someone who loves to follow the rules or someone who thinks rules confine us?

We all live in the society where everything has rules. From the moment you wake up till the time we sleep, we are obliged to obey these rules. Have you ever started dancing in the middle of a lecture when the teacher was teaching or slept in the office in the afternoon? Most of us would answer this as No. Reason? It is against the rules, someone will take action against us or everyone will outcast us for our embarrassing behavior. We all have different reasons for why we obey to certain things or certain people. Have you ever questioned why we are obedient or why certain people do not like to follow rules?

Psychologists had the same questions. It has always been interested in understanding the human behavior behind obedience. Why we obey, what are the reasons behind obedience, etc. Many historical experiments were conducted to study obedience. Let us dive deeper in the world of obedience through the lens of psychology!

What is Obedience

If we want to define obedience we can define it as –

Social pressure that involves an individual acting according to the orders given by an authority figure. These actions are something that the person would not have taken by himself unless someone with authority or influence tells him to do it. Some of the daily life examples of obedience are –
You stopping at the red signal or turning in your assignment on time.

Obedience is like a train on the tracks. It is important for the train to stay on the tracks in order to reach its destination safely without any accidents. In the same way, people obey rules and regulations given by an authority figure or someone with influence to avoid accidents and make the journey of the life smooth.

Important experiment on obedience

As mentioned earlier, psychology has always been keen on studying obedience. One of the most important studies that have been conducted in regard of obedience is – Milgram’s experiment. Many a times we are faced with the tough choice of having to choose between obedience to
the authority and our own self–conscious. Stanley Milgram, psychologist from Yale University conducted an experiment to study this conflict.

Read More: 10 Great Experiments in the field of Psychology

The experiment tried to study how far would an individual will obey the authority if they knew they were hurting someone. Milgram selected 40 men through newspaper advertisement for the study. Each of the participants was assigned the role of a teacher. They were given orders by the “authority” to give electric shocks to the students for incorrect answers. Not known by the participants, the students were confederate in the experiment, sitting in the adjacent room.

As the experiment progressed the participants heard the learners begged to be released. The learners also banged on the wall and complained of having a heart condition. The results of the experiments were shocking. Even when the learners complained of being in pain and participants felt frustrated and angry they continued to follow the orders of the authority till the very end. The experiment demonstrated how the humans can go as far as hurting someone to obey the commands of an acceptable authority.

Factors influencing obedience

Do you think there are some things that might increase or decrease your obedience? There are certain factors that influence our obedience to the authority.

a. Proximity to the authority

Let’s look at two scenarios –

Scene 1 – the teacher asks the students to keep quiet and sits in the classroom itself
Scene 2 – the teacher asks the students to maintain silence and leaves the classroom.

In both these scenarios where do you think there will be more obedience to the teacher’s orders? We all know that the students are more likely to follow the teacher’s orders and be quiet when the teacher is present in the classroom rather than when she leaves the classroom. Proximity to the authority is one of the factors that influence our obedience. People are more obedient when the authority is closer in the proximity. The closer the authority figure is higher is the obedience demonstrated.

b. Deindividuation

Have you ever done something that you knew was wrong but you knew you were not going to be held responsible even if you got caught? This is what the term deindividuation means. Obedience tends to increase when individual knows he is not the one who is going to be responsible for the consequence. People, when not held guilty feel that they are simply puppets carrying out the orders and show higher obedience.

For example – people will often engage in aggressive behavior during riots and harm public property which they would not usually do alone. Crowds make sure that no individual is held accountable for the actions. Deindividuation is when an individual losses their sense of personal identity when in groups and engage in activities they might not perform otherwise.

Read More: Peer Pressure and behavioral influences due to it

c. Legitimacy of the Authority

If you are ill, whose advice are you most likely to follow – A doctor or some random person on the street?

The answer is off course a doctor. Why? Because he has a legitimate degree and you trust his capability to cure you. The legitimacy of the authority plays an important role in how much an individual will obey the orders. If the authority is legitimate that is someone who is well known in that fields
then people demonstrate higher obedience. During the Milgram’s experiment, one of the reason people exhibited more obedience is because the experiment was conducted by Yale University. It is a prestigious and well known American university.

Some of the daily life examples of obedience due to the legitimacy of authority include – We buy toothpaste that says recommended by the dentists in their commercials or we follow laws like paying the taxes on time because they are made by government which is a legitimate institution. We can say that – legitimacy of the authority is one of the factors that influence obedience of an individual.

d. Cultural Factors

Were you also someone who was told to follow whatever your elders say because they are older than you and they won’t misguide you? Most of us have grown up obeying the orders of our elders. Since it is something that we have been hearing from young age we tend to show higher obedience.
For example – in cultures with strict educational systems like South Korea and Finland, respect towards teachers is deeply ingrained within students. Their educational institutions emphasis on the respect to the teachers makes the students more obedient towards the authorities in the society.
Cultures that emphasize on respecting the authorities show higher obedience in the society.

Why are we Obedient?

Do you ever think of the reasons why we are obedient? Is it really because we want to obey the orders of the authority or are there some other reasons behind our obedience? Here are some of the things that might play a role in our obedience –

a. Fear of consequence

Have you ever finished your entire tiffin which had a vegetable you were not really fond of, because you knew your mom will scold you? We often obey because we are afraid of the consequences that disobedience would bring. For example – you listen to your boss at your workplace because you are afraid of getting fired or children listen to their parents in the fear of their games being taken away or being scolded. Fear of punishment or negative outcomes increase the obedience among people.

b. Need for Social Acceptance

People are sometimes obedient simply because they want to fit in and not stick out as a sore thumb. Individuals in a group obey the group norms even if they go against their ideals to feel accepted. For example – Teenagers, often under the influence of peer pressure might engage in activities like smoking or drinking to fit in their social group. Even if they know that it is harmful habit and may have adverse effects on their health they would follow the habit simply because they don’t want to be the only one standing out. Our need for social acceptance may force us to be obedient even if we don’t really want to be.

c. Rewards

It is not always the fear of punishments that leads to obedience. Sometimes we obey the authority because it brings us advantage. Obedience is also demonstrated due to the rewards it gives. For example – you obey the commands of your boss because at the end of the month he gives you salary, which is a reward. Or, you obey your parents because they promise you some new game or extra screen time. Rewards do play a part in deciding if the person will be obedient or not.

d. Foot-in-the–door phenomenon

Has it ever happened to you that you agreed to do a small favor for your friend and after that it became difficult to say no to any of their big requests?
This is called as foot-in–the–door technique or gradual commitment. It is when a person starts with smaller requests that you cannot refuse and then goes on to make bigger requests. In the case of obedience, first the person may start with making little commands which you would obey and after a while the intensity of the commands would increase and you would have difficulty in refusing to obey.

For example- Various cults may start by initially inviting their members to harmless meetings or social gatherings. After a time period, when the members are comfortable and involved they would introduce them to extreme ideologies and behaviors. Since, they are involved it becomes difficult for them to disobey. In this way, gradual commitments can lead to obedience.

e. Role of Buffers

Buffers are something that distances you from the results of your actions from obedience. When you know that whatever action you are obeying will not have any significant impact on your own life you are likely to be more obedient. For example – people find it easier to make negative comments on other’s social media posts than saying negative things face to face. It is because the physical distance from person that online platform provides makes it easier because you are distant from them and cannot see their immediate reactions. If you are physically or psychologically distant from the results of your actions it does not impact you much to obey.

Is obedience good or bad?

On one side Martin Luther said – “Obedience is the crown and honour of all virtue.” While on the other side it is said by Erich Fromm that – “Human history begins with man’s act of disobedience which is at the same time the beginning of his freedom and the development of his reason.” Then what exactly do we do? Obedience is the foundation of the society. It helps in maintaining stability. It is obedience that reduces conflicts and chaos among people.

For example – without obedience of traffic rules and regulations it will be in minutes that there would be a huge traffic jam. Disobedience would unleash chaos in the world. There would be wars without obedience. On personal level, continuously disobeying norms can result in reduced co-operation and trust. Disobedience at workplace and educational settings can lead to poor performance, inefficiency and a lot of mistakes.

Obedience is necessary to keep the world from falling into disorder. Now let us look at the other side of the story. Sometimes blind obedience can cause adverse effects. Sometimes unquestioned obedience can grant power to abusive authority which suppresses the common population. For example – In this age of social media, everything is available on everyone’s screen. But is all this information reliable?

Many a time’s people blindly follow health advices given on the social media. Without verifying the information with a healthcare professional. This can cause them to have severe health issues. Blindly following anything simply because an authority asks us to can lead to loss of critical thinking ability and independent decision-making. It is important to find the right balance between obedience and blindly following the orders of someone. Don’t be so obedient that the world fools you but, also don’t be so disobedient that you have no stability and order. Carefully walk the thin line between the two.

Obedience in Digital World

It keeps happening that people follow an instagram influencer on social media; they like the content he posts and also starts buying the products he promoted on his page. Almost treats him as supreme authority. Then one fine day, suddenly the social media is flooded with some negative news about him and the entire belief changes. Then some new influencer enters and the story repeats. In the world where everything has become a hashtag and trend, then how come obedience not be unaffected by it. In the digital age, obedience has become very fragile. It keeps on changing. During earlier times, authority was not so weak.

They were able to captivate people’s obedience for a long time. But this is not true today. People question, form and change opinions all at the same speed. But the society is not yet immune from the obedience. It has changed its form in the digital world. With the world being more connected it has also become more controlled. We all are constantly under the digital surveillance. This leads to obedience due to fear of the authority rather than out of genuine respect.

Conclusion

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.

Anne Sullivan

Obedience is an important term in our life. It is something that brings order and secureness in our life. It brings with itself safety. It is obedience to knowledgeable men that teaches us life lessons. Being obedient to them prepares us for the journey of life. But there is another side to this story of obedience. Blindly following the authority without our own critical thinking and decision making ability might make us pawns in the hands of abusive authority. Sometimes this blind obedience can lead to empowerment of evil. Remember even great men like Mahatma Gandhi had to do a civil disobedience movement to free the country from oppressive rulers.

“Blind obedience is a sign of weakness.”

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