Obedience: A Psychological Analysis

Great Essays
Wherever one may go in this world they find obedience. The location or the culture of the area does not matter to the similarity of your findings, all will relate one way, and that is through the mindset of obedience. One will see obedience from pets to owners, parents to children, and even spouse to spouse with how they submit themselves to each other. The Author’s Stanley Milgram, Norimitsu Onishi, Martin Fackler, Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and Lynn H. Nicholas will all contribute to this research based analysis on behalf of the analysis of obedience itself. Stanley Milgram was a Yale psychologist who is highly praised for his shocking study on obedience, and high pressure situations. Norimitsu Onishi was a Princeton …show more content…
Braverman was interviewed to see what the experiment was about, and how he believed himself to have handled the situation and he said “[w]hat appalled me was that I could possess the capacity for obedience and compliance to a central idea” (Milgram 84) which goes to show that under the influence of obedience one can do the unthinkable to them previously known, before the high pressure situation. During high-pressure situations people are simply just trying to survive or get through the task ahead. The way that people handle pressure as children also reflects how we also handle it as adults. As children we grow up and learn all of our lessons and values, and one thing that really sticks on us is fear. People can’t run from fear, because we always keep it in the back of our mind, it is something that never leaves us unless you overcome it. As was implicitly said in the article “Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?”, Children’s fear of stress will most likely follow them into adulthood because of the importance they usually have allowed it to have on their mind, and the importance their parent or guardian has allowed it to have on their child’s mind (Bronson and Merryman 2). To not have control over your stress levels is to not allow you to make your choices freely, and to not allow you to consider that what you may be doing could be morally …show more content…
One of the “oldest reactors suffered a hydrogen explosion” (Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler 1), which could have easily resulted in a nuclear meltdown. If this man did not disobey this direct order of not letting the sea water in, then the power plant would have had a nuclear meltdown and resulted in what we now know as Chernobyl or worse. Under normal circumstance this man would have been scorned, fired, and dishonored for not following a direct order, but since he ended up saving thousands of lives, he is held as a hero. In many ways this story relates to how we perceive stress and our fight or flight strategies on stressful situations which in this situation which then can be translated into perform or procrastinate. This strategy of performance or procrastination cannot have the luxury as it does for most of us every day, especially in these high-pressure situations. In most high-pressure situations actions are required to be taken, and if that does not happen then the result can be worse than the step that would have been required to take to prevent it. In the article “Why Some Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?” the authors show a different side of view on how some children are not affected

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Cool Hand Luke: the act of conforming outside of society to create a persona of an outlaw. Starring academy award winning Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke starts off by setting the tone for the entire movie. Luke Jackson, was arrested for destroying municipal property while under the influence of alcohol. This lead him to be sentenced two years in a road prison, in a chain gang. Many argue that his sentence was worse then his minor offence.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Q32: What is important PSW’s responsibility? First, provide personal care to assist client with ADL. Second, provide for the client’s safety and physical comfort. Third, support nurses and other health care professionals by following the established care plan Q33:…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Milligram’s experiment was based on his interest in researching who and how would someone obey authority figures. He was driven by the thought that maybe there is something about human nature that led people to obey. Having studied previously both Milgram and Zimbardo’s obedience studies, it was easier for me to analyze and apply it to the purpose of the book. The authors point out that although general results are important, there was not much thought put into the difference among the individuals in the experiments. Milgram focused on the 65% of subjects who obeyed the authority, but was less interested on why the 35% of the subjects…

    • 1341 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, this is a largely simplistic view of the results of the experiments. The participants did not simply obey the person of authority named the experimenter. As demonstrated in the extensive video footage of the experiments, many of them exhibited great distress and tension, attempted to refuse participation, and tried to reason with the experimenter (Milgram, 1962). While it can be argued that a reasonable person could simply exit the room to leave or to check on the other participant receiving the shocks, the situation prevented this action, not physically, but psychologically. In turn, it may be argued that rather than obedience to orders, the participants of this study succumbed to incessant…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Question 1 The Milgram study was done with the objection of finding out whether obedience for from an authoritative figure was a common occurrence, for example, the killing of Jews by Nazis. Therefore, how long were subjects willing to inflict pin on another person when asked to, despite knowing the seriousness of the injuries. From the experiment, the experimenter established routine through the use of the predefined prods such as ‘please go on and please continue (Myers & Twenge, 2017).’ That way the subject would know what to do when they would hear these words.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Milgram proposed that people operate on two levels. First, they operate as autonomous individuals, where they act according to their own values and beliefs. Second, they act on an agentic level where they see themselves as agents, acting on behalf of somebody else and not responsible for their own actions. He asserted that it is possible to move from an autonomous state into an agentic state; this is referred to as an agentic shift (Milgram, 1963). A consequence of this shift is that an individual no longer feels responsible for their actions.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Easy Task Of Obeying

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages

    It is no secret that society has a marginal perspective toward women and their abilities, questioning their capacity and intelligence. In the beginning of times, according to the Bible in the book of Genesis, God said “16 To the woman… “I will surely multiply your pain in child bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” (ESV) “… He shall rule over you” (ESV) has marked demeanor towards woman.…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Imagine this. You’re paralyzed, unable to do anything the way you want; unable to achieve new goals, to try new things, or to simply live your life the way you want to because you are restricted. Many times we have a similar reaction to fear. Fear can motivate us to an extent, if used correctly and in small amounts. But more often than not we let fear take over and control us, stopping us from doing what we actually want to achieve.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I would have to say that this is an example of obedience conformity. Obedience is when you have to change according to an authority figure. So since the employer has this policy in place. If the employee wishes to stay with the company then I am sure that they are going to have to follow the policy that the company has set in place. They are not coming to an agreement or disagreeing with the company.…

    • 84 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Milgram’s essay “The Perils of Obedience,” he states “the real focus of the experiment is the teacher” (692). During the process there was a teacher, student, and experimenter, the students were hired actors. The experiment consisted of the teacher giving the student words in which the learner had to repeat them back, and if they got them wrong they would be shocked and the voltage would elevate with each wrong answer. Throughout the process and various teachers, Milgram saw different reactions, only one stood up for the learner refusing to proceed based on the learner’s reactions, another laughed uncontrollably, and the rest followed orders with no remorse regardless of how the student reacted (Milgram 695). Milgram’s point was “to extricate himself from this plight, the subject must make a clear break with authority” (693).…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is true because if Milgram would’ve told his subjects that the experiment was going to make them sadistic in so way, and obedient towards hurting a human being, they probably wouldn’t had done…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Many scientists such as Stanley Milgram, Erich Fromm, Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett have tested their theory of obedience to authority. Their findings might frighten people on how obedient people are and what the sick and twisted things people will do. An example of obedience to authority is the writing of this paper for Doctor Campbell, if not done properly with obedience the grade of the student will plummet. Another example of people listening to orders given by an authoritarian person that inflicted pain, suffering, and even death is the Holocaust; the Holocaust was set up by Adolf Hitler and Nazi officers in concentration camps. The Nazi officers were told to run these concentration camps filled with innocent people and to exterminate…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ethical guidelines are crucial in research to minimise unnecessary physical or psychological harm to participants in an experiment. Before ethical guidelines existed in research, several experiments were not conducted ethically. In 1963, American psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted Milgram’s Study of Obedience investigating participants' obedience towards authority. The study demonstrated multiple ethical issues which proved the importance of ethics in research. This report will address the ethical principles that Milgram's study covered poorly and how they could be modified to improve the study.…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Diana Baumrind often disagreed with the ethics of the Milgram Experiment; however, Ian Parker took on a different perspective than she. Diana Baumrind, author of, Review of Stanley Milgram 's Experiments on Obedience, claims in his experiments the ethics he possessed were immoral and wrong. Throughout her article she continually disagreed with everything Milgram had "achieved", starting from the first experiments results which appeared as a review in American Psychologist in 1963 (Baumrind 89). While Diana disputed what she thought was the atrocious ethics of Milgram 's experiments, she furthermore believed Milgram should have debriefed the subjects more than what he had done (95). Although Baumrind opinionated her thoughts on these issues,…

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    My experience of stress can be best described as a rollercoaster, steadily climbing and once at the top it can plunge down and back up and to the left and to the right, almost as if the stress is controlling the ride. Stress has changed over the years as well. My early childhood life didn’t include the worry of life, but the concern of self. I grew up as a very shy individual and was constantly scared to talk or speak in many situations. I am not sure how or why I was a shy individual, but it was a big stressor during my early development.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays