The Probert Encyclopaedia of General Information

OBEDIENCE

Obedience is the carrying out instructions or commands; submitting to authority.
Obedience became an important topic in social psychology in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of extensive research by American psychologist Stanley Milgram which showed that a high proportion of ordinary individuals would obey instructions that involved inflicting severe pain on, and even the murder of others. Milgram had sought to show that German guards working at concentration camps during the Second World War were responsible for their actions, and that they couldn't use the argument that they were simply following orders. However, his research showed the opposite in a dramatic way. Obeying orders when disobedience results in punishment is understandable (even if not always morally justifiable), but Milgram claimed that many people would willingly obey orders, even if not threatened with punishment.

The subjects in his experiments were required to act as ' teachers' for a 'learner' who, unknown to them, was a confederate of the experimenter. Using a simulated shock generator, they were told to administer electric shocks, of increasing strengths, every time the 'learner' made a mistake. In some experiments as many as 60% of the subjects, when the experimenter told them to continue, administered shocks that they believed would seriously harm or kill the 'learner'. Although distressed by their actions, the subjects felt the experimenter was responsible. Milgram's work has not been accepted uncritically, most of the criticisms being levelled at the ethics of the experiment which led people to believe they had in fact killed an innocent man, although after the experiment they were reassured, but it has generated much discussion and stimulated further research.
Research Obedience