Obedience (human behavior) facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Obedience is when a person follows the clear instructions or orders given by someone in charge, like a parent, teacher, or police officer. It's different from compliance, which is when you're influenced by friends, and conformity, which is when you act like most people around you. Depending on the situation, obeying can be seen as good, bad, or just neutral.

People often obey those they see as having real authority. Famous studies like the Milgram experiment in the 1960s showed this. Stanley Milgram did his experiment to understand how ordinary people could take part in terrible acts, like those during the Holocaust. His study showed that obeying authority was very common, not rare. Milgram said that having some system of authority is needed for people to live together. The Stanford prison experiment also reached a similar conclusion.

Exploring Obedience in Studies
Obedience in Culture
What Influences Obedience
See also

Exploring Obedience in Studies

Classic Experiments and What They Found

While other areas of study look at obedience, social psychology has done the most research on it. Scientists have studied obedience in different ways.

Milgram's Shocking Experiment

One of the most famous and talked-about studies was done by Stanley Milgram. Like many psychology experiments, it used a bit of a trick on the people taking part. Participants were told they were joining a study about how punishment affects learning. But the real goal was to see if people would obey a harmful authority figure.

Each participant was a "teacher" who taught word pairs. The "learner" (who was actually helping the experimenter) sat in another room. The "teacher" was told to give the "learner" electric shocks that got stronger for every wrong answer. If a "teacher" questioned what they were doing, the "researcher" (another helper) would tell them to keep going. The "teachers" were told to ignore the "learner's" screams and pleas to stop. The experiment measured how high the voltage of the shocks the "teacher" would give.

Zimbardo's Prison Study

Another well-known study on obedience happened at Stanford University in the 1970s. Phillip Zimbardo led this experiment, called the Stanford Prison Experiment. College students were put into a fake prison setting. Half were randomly chosen to be "guards," and the other half were "prisoners." The goal was to see how "social forces" affected their behavior. The fake prison was made to feel very real, to make the students feel like they were truly imprisoned.

What These Studies Showed

The Milgram study found that most people would obey orders, even if it seemed to hurt others. With encouragement from someone they saw as an authority, about two-thirds of the participants gave the highest level of shock. This surprised Milgram because he thought people learned from childhood not to hurt others. Milgram suggested that participants might have entered an "agentic state." This means they felt like they were just following orders and the authority figure was responsible for their actions.

The study also showed how much stress this caused. Many participants showed signs of tension and emotional strain, especially after giving strong shocks. Some even had seizures, and one time the experiment had to be stopped.

Zimbardo's prison study had similar results. The "guards" obeyed orders and became aggressive. The "prisoners" became hostile and upset with their "guards." The "guards'" cruelty and the "prisoners'" stress made Zimbardo stop the experiment early, after only six days.

Newer Studies and Their Findings

The Milgram and Zimbardo studies changed how psychologists think about obedience. Milgram's study especially caused a lot of discussion. In a more recent study, Jerry Burger repeated Milgram's method with some changes to make it safer. Burger's study was similar, but it stopped when the shocks reached 150 volts. Participants then decided if they wanted to continue. Burger also screened participants carefully to make sure they wouldn't be harmed. He also included both men and women to see if gender made a difference.

Burger's first study found results very similar to Milgram's. The rates of obedience were almost the same, showing that people's tendency to obey hasn't changed much over time. Burger also found that both men and women behaved similarly, meaning obedience happens regardless of gender.

In a follow-up study, Burger found that participants who worried about the "learner's" well-being were less likely to continue. He also saw that the more the experimenter pushed the participant to continue, the more likely they were to stop.

Other studies in different countries, like Spain, Australia, and Jordan, also found that people tend to be obedient.

Why Obedience Matters

One idea in obedience research is that the situation itself causes people to obey. However, Thomas Blass's research suggests that a person's personality can also play a role.

Blass found that people who tend to obey authority more (called "authoritarian submission") were more likely to obey. He also found that when people watched parts of the original Milgram studies, those who scored high on authoritarianism blamed the people giving the shocks less.

Also, people who were good at understanding social situations (had high social intelligence) were more likely to resist obeying authority.

Obedience in Culture

Doge's Palace in Venice: a carving showing Obedience to God.

Many cultures traditionally see obedience as a good thing. Historically, societies expected children to obey elders, and people to obey their leaders or God. For example, in some Christian weddings, the bride used to promise to obey her husband. This has changed over time with women's rights movements.

In the Catholic Church, obedience is seen as an important spiritual practice, following the example of Christ.

Learning to obey rules is a big part of growing up. Adults use many ways to teach children to follow rules. Also, armies train soldiers very carefully to obey orders, even in dangerous situations. Soldiers start by obeying small, simple orders. Over time, the orders become more demanding, until they instinctively obey even very risky commands.

What Influences Obedience

Power and Prestige

Soldiers obeying a superior officer is a common example of obedience.

In the Milgram experiment, the appearance of power or importance played a big role in obedience. For example, the "researchers" wore gray laboratory coats. This made them look like smart and important scientists. This look was thought to be a main reason why people followed orders to give what they thought were painful shocks. The Stanford Prison Experiment also found similar results.

The researcher Raj Persaud noted that Milgram was very careful with details. For instance, Milgram used gray lab coats instead of white ones. He didn't want people to think the "experimenter" was a medical doctor, which might have limited his findings only to doctors' authority.

The idea of "prestige" (being respected or admired) is really part of the larger idea of "power." So, the prestige of a Yale professor in a lab coat comes from the knowledge, status, and social importance linked to that image.

Agentic State and Other Reasons

Milgram believed that the main part of obedience is when a person starts to see themselves as just a tool for someone else's wishes. Because of this, they no longer feel responsible for their own actions. Once this change happens, all the other parts of obedience follow.

Besides this "agentic state," Milgram suggested other things that made people obey. These included being polite, feeling awkward about stopping, focusing on the technical parts of the task, believing the experiment was for a good cause, and feeling anxious.

Sticking to Beliefs

Another idea about Milgram's results is that people tend to stick to their beliefs. People might not realize that someone who seems good is actually asking them to do something bad. This can happen even when there's a lot of proof that the authority figure is wrong. So, the reason people acted the way they did might be because they couldn't change their idea that the authority was good, rather than completely giving up their own humanity.