Importance of Obedience
Obedience is an extremely important aspect of our society and plays a huge role in today's civilized lifestyle. People in a civil society have been raised to believe that obeying orders will have a positive outcome and disobeying comes with negative consequences. There have been many experiments over time that have tested the lengths that people would go to obey orders or conform to expectations under the directions from an authority figure. Philip G. Zimbardo conducted The Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram conducted The Perils of Obedience, to determine how far individuals would go to be obedient or conform to an authority figure when given orders or roles that went against their basic values. Milgram …show more content…
In The Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo compelled the volunteers to behave as guards and prisoners without inflicting physical pain. Zimbardo used situations to transform students to prisoners. The article writes, “The combination of realism and symbolism in this experiment had fused to create a vivid illusion of imprisonment” (Zimbardo 627). No physical pain was needed to compel conformity. In The Perils of Obedience experiment, Stanley Milgram took an opposite approach, Milgram convinced the volunteers to use physical pain in an attempt to gain obedience from the learner. This tactic for gaining obedience was less successful. As seen in these examples if humans are not strong as individuals then obedience and conformity can be very …show more content…
An example of this would be having to change schools to a different state in the middle of the school year. To fit in individuals need to adapt to the new surroundings and be open to different ways of doing things but do not need to compromise their conscience or values to do that. In the article The Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo explains that the prisoners at first tried to band together and revolt but but soon just gave in and “toed the line” (Zimbardo 626). This shows negatively choosing to adapt rather than staying true to individual values. Zimbardo wrote, “As the prisoners observed his fellow prisoners allowing the guards to humiliate them, acting like compliant sheep, carrying out mindless orders with total obedience, and even being cursed by fellow prisoners. Under such circumstances, how could a prisoner have respect for his fellows, or any self-respect for what he obviously was becoming in the eyes of all those evaluating him?” (Zimbardo 627). This statement shows how losing your individualism for the sake of adapting or obeying can have very detrimental
Obedience is an extremely important aspect of our society and plays a huge role in today's civilized lifestyle. People in a civil society have been raised to believe that obeying orders will have a positive outcome and disobeying comes with negative consequences. There have been many experiments over time that have tested the lengths that people would go to obey orders or conform to expectations under the directions from an authority figure. Philip G. Zimbardo conducted The Stanford Prison Experiment and Stanley Milgram conducted The Perils of Obedience, to determine how far individuals would go to be obedient or conform to an authority figure when given orders or roles that went against their basic values. Milgram …show more content…
In The Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo compelled the volunteers to behave as guards and prisoners without inflicting physical pain. Zimbardo used situations to transform students to prisoners. The article writes, “The combination of realism and symbolism in this experiment had fused to create a vivid illusion of imprisonment” (Zimbardo 627). No physical pain was needed to compel conformity. In The Perils of Obedience experiment, Stanley Milgram took an opposite approach, Milgram convinced the volunteers to use physical pain in an attempt to gain obedience from the learner. This tactic for gaining obedience was less successful. As seen in these examples if humans are not strong as individuals then obedience and conformity can be very …show more content…
An example of this would be having to change schools to a different state in the middle of the school year. To fit in individuals need to adapt to the new surroundings and be open to different ways of doing things but do not need to compromise their conscience or values to do that. In the article The Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip G. Zimbardo explains that the prisoners at first tried to band together and revolt but but soon just gave in and “toed the line” (Zimbardo 626). This shows negatively choosing to adapt rather than staying true to individual values. Zimbardo wrote, “As the prisoners observed his fellow prisoners allowing the guards to humiliate them, acting like compliant sheep, carrying out mindless orders with total obedience, and even being cursed by fellow prisoners. Under such circumstances, how could a prisoner have respect for his fellows, or any self-respect for what he obviously was becoming in the eyes of all those evaluating him?” (Zimbardo 627). This statement shows how losing your individualism for the sake of adapting or obeying can have very detrimental