Obedience

1
Obedience

• Presenters Maureen, Saada, Kandyce Kristen

2
Obedience Defined

• A form of compliance that occurs when people
  follow direct commands from people in a position
  of authority.

3
Authority

• A legitimate authority is one who is perceived to
  be in a position of social control within a given
  situation and that the power of an authority
  stems not from personal characteristics but from
  his perceived position in a social structure.

4
Milgrams Obedience Studies

• Reflections of the Holocaust
• Unique to Germany?
• Yale study 1963
• Learner and Teacher
• Administer shocks for wrong answer (30 levels of
  shock).

5
Results

• 65 administered maximum voltage
• Only 1/3 refused participation
• Destructive obedience
• Physical distance
• In the right situation, normal people can commit
  brutal crimes

6
Milgram After 35 years

• Legitimate authority
• A right to issue commands
• One is obliged to obey
• The agentic state
• Expert authority vs. simple command authority
• Those unfamiliar with the experiment
  underestimate the actual obedience rates.

7
Further Variations and Controls

• Closeness of authority
• Alterations in the relationship between the
  subject and experimenter have important
  consequences for obedience
• Obedience dropped significantly when the
  experimenter was physically removed from the
  laboratory
• Women as subjects
• Freewill to choose shock level
• Situations do not provide settings in which it is
  acceptable for the subject to hurt another person
• Aggression does not explain the behaviour

8
National Identity

• Social conformity is not exclusive to the United
  States
• Psychological mechanism underlying all cultural
  behaviour
• Social criticism regarding conformity
• Measuring conformity
• Scientific soundness

9
Solomon Asch

• Group-pressure experiment
• Majority of subjects conformed to the opinion of
  the group.

10
The My Lai Massacre Cause of Obedience

• Conducted by U.S. Army forces in the hamlet of My
  Lai,
• Mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed Vietnamese
  civilians, mostly women and children

11
Compliance and Moral Sense

• Soldiers were trained to obey superiors however
  in the United States for example, the military
  does not train soldiers to recognize illegal or
  immoral orders

12
Rwandan Genocide

• Mass killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic
  Tutsis
• Death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000.
• Despite international news coverage most
  countries declined to prevent or stop the
  massacres.

13
Torture of Iraqi Prisoners

• Army general command soldiers to abuse and
  humiliate Iraqis that were lead at a prison near
  Baghdad.
• Americans, men and women in military uniforms,
  posed with naked Iraqi prisoners.

14
What drives normal people to commit such
atrocities?
15
Altemeyers theory of Personality Characteristics

• Right wing authoritarianism
• Authoritarian submission
• Fearfulness, self-righteousness behaviour

16
Steps taking to Increase Obedience in the
Military

• Training and Screening of Candidates
• During training techniques to increase bonding
• Techniques to reduce strain

17
Mechanisms of Destructive Obedience

• Hierarchical relationship-legitimate authority
• Implicit contractual agreement
• Compliance with social etiquette
• Consistency between beliefs and actions

18
Continued.

• Surveillance and supervision
• Buffers-proximity-anonymity
• Ideological thinking

19
.

• Background authority
• Phenomenal Unity of Act
• Banality of Evil-Arendt

20
Criticisms

• Too ideological
• Participants had an unusually high stress level
• Other ethical concerns?
• Concerns for validity?

21
Obedience Conditioning

• Survival value
• Autonomy versus Hierarchy
• Upbringing
• Parenting
• School
• Work
• Rewards

22
Motivation

• Individuals behave as they do for 3 reasons
• Personal standards
• Authority
• Group

23
Social Identity Theory(Hogg Abrams, 1988)

• Personal
• Identity

Social Identity

• Social categories
• Fiske Neuberg, 1990
• Moral disengagement

• Specific attributes

24
Moral Disengagement(Beu Buckley, 2004)

• Moral justification
• Palliative comparison
• Euphemistic labeling

Minimizing, ignoring or misconstruing
the consequences
Dehumanizing Attribution of blame
Reprehensible conduct
Detrimental effects
Victim
Displacement of responsibility Diffusion of
responsibility
(Bandura, 1986)
25
Motivation

• Individuals behave as they do for 3 reasons
• Personal standards
• Authority
• Group

26
Disobedience - Milgram

• What differentiated those who obeyed from those
  who did not?
• What factors increase the salience of personal
  identity whereby one maintains local control?

Social Identity
Personal Identity
27
Self-Monitoring Theory(Snyder, 1987)

• People differ in the extent to which they draw
• from
• Situational norms
• Inner feelings/attributes
• for behavioural guidance.

28
Self-Monitoring Theory(Snyder, 1987)

• High self-monitors
• Use situational considerations as a basis for
  behaviour
• Responsive to social and interpersonal cues
• Low self-monitors
• Act on information from internal sources
• Demonstrate more consistency between behaviour
  and attitude

29
Normative Climates Self Preservation(Snyder
Monson, 1975)
High self-monitors
Conforming
Low self-monitors
Autonomous
Autonomy Norms
Conformity Norms
30
Application of Self-Monitoring Scale
Self-Monitoring Scale
Social Identity
Personal Identity
31
Obedience Today

• When have you morally disengaged?
• What did it cost you?

32
Resisting Destructive Obedience

• What can you do to prevent destructive obedience
• in yourself?
• in others?