Thomas Chandler Haliburton once said: “Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience”. This quote is quite true. There is much debate about what causes obedience- or disobedience in this matter - to authority. Some people argue that a person’s personality or character traits are the reason. They believe that based on a person’s history could dictate how they respond to a situation. Others suggest that people have a problem with people who blindly follow authority. According to them, Americans cannot have a decent leader unless the followers know how to recognize and correctly respond to it. Still others say that the people in authority are at fault because they are changed by the power that results from being in
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Situations are the cause of a person’s behavior or obedience to authority because personality has no effect on it, as the situation changes so does obedience to authority, the experiment written about by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, and the Stanford Prison Experiment.
A person’s personality does not affect their obedience to authority. Most people would assume that based on a person’s personality, one could predict their reaction to a situation. For example, take a homeless man asking for money. A person walks by. If someone had to predict whether the passerbyer would give money to the man they would want to know about the person’s character and past. They would want to know if the person was kind and compassionate toward the poor. However, according to Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, “A half century of research has taught us that in this situation, and in most other novel situations, one cannot predict with any accuracy how particular people will respond. At least one cannot do so using information about an individual’s personal dispositions or even about that individual’s …show more content…
In “The Power of Situations” the authors wrote: “But often the situational variable makes quite a bit of difference” (Nisbett, Ross 629). Darley and Batson (1973) did an experiment with seminary students who were on their way to give a practice sermon. Along the way, there was a “homeless” man who was asking the students for help. Most of the students who were in a hurry (because they thought they were going to be late to give their sermon) did not stop and help the man. Only about 10% of them did. However, those who were going to give the sermon later were more likely to help. Sixty-three percent of them stopped and offered to help the man. This experiment shows just how much the situation affects obedience to authority. The people’s personality did not dictate what they did. The circumstances decided how they responded to the situation. Only those who were not in a hurry to get to class stopped to help the man. Whether they were a compassionate person or not did not have a visible impact on the results. Their obedience depended wholly on the situation. People speaking about the experiment stated: “People’s inflated belief in the importance of personality traits and dispositions, together with their failure to recognize the importance of situational factors in affecting behavior, has been termed the “fundamental attribution error” (Nisbett, Ross, 629). Here
Situations are the cause of a person’s behavior or obedience to authority because personality has no effect on it, as the situation changes so does obedience to authority, the experiment written about by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, and the Stanford Prison Experiment.
A person’s personality does not affect their obedience to authority. Most people would assume that based on a person’s personality, one could predict their reaction to a situation. For example, take a homeless man asking for money. A person walks by. If someone had to predict whether the passerbyer would give money to the man they would want to know about the person’s character and past. They would want to know if the person was kind and compassionate toward the poor. However, according to Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, “A half century of research has taught us that in this situation, and in most other novel situations, one cannot predict with any accuracy how particular people will respond. At least one cannot do so using information about an individual’s personal dispositions or even about that individual’s …show more content…
In “The Power of Situations” the authors wrote: “But often the situational variable makes quite a bit of difference” (Nisbett, Ross 629). Darley and Batson (1973) did an experiment with seminary students who were on their way to give a practice sermon. Along the way, there was a “homeless” man who was asking the students for help. Most of the students who were in a hurry (because they thought they were going to be late to give their sermon) did not stop and help the man. Only about 10% of them did. However, those who were going to give the sermon later were more likely to help. Sixty-three percent of them stopped and offered to help the man. This experiment shows just how much the situation affects obedience to authority. The people’s personality did not dictate what they did. The circumstances decided how they responded to the situation. Only those who were not in a hurry to get to class stopped to help the man. Whether they were a compassionate person or not did not have a visible impact on the results. Their obedience depended wholly on the situation. People speaking about the experiment stated: “People’s inflated belief in the importance of personality traits and dispositions, together with their failure to recognize the importance of situational factors in affecting behavior, has been termed the “fundamental attribution error” (Nisbett, Ross, 629). Here