Psy: Obedience Essay

Obedience is the act of practicing obeying; dutiful or submissive compliance. Humans have an instinct to obey because of the role authority plays. Milgram’s research proves my point in his case study that involved shocks of voltage. From birth, we learn that everything has a consequence or punishment after an action. Children learn simple philosophies in their youngest age such as obeying their parent’s requests. Something as simple as eating vegetables has a consequence. A reward gives the child satisfaction to emphasize the good behavior or, in the opposite case, bad behavior. As humans get older, this simple idea enlarges when it applies to different phases in life. Scientists like Milgrim and Marta Laupa study factors that play a role in obedience using variables like electrical shocks. In the psychology department, scientists like Milgrim, studied obedience to understand human behavior. He used cruel and unusual ways to study how humans will react to authority. The punishments included electrical shocks at different voltages. This is just one of way psychologists test authority versus obedience. His experiment involved 42 participants, some of them being the enforcer and some acting as the victim. The authority role would execute the victim with electrical shocks beginning from 15 to 450. Milgrim’s blind case study took place at Harvard University where the participants agreed to take part without any kind of explanation. The authoritative volunteer requested the number of voltages from the patient. No one objected the voltage until it reached a maximum of 450. As the voltage amount rose, the participants allegedly showed signs of stress and nervousness but never refused the electricity until the last and most fatal amount of voltage. Later, Milgrim altered the study by placing the authority figure outside of the electricity room. He or she used a loudspeaker to inform the victim of the situation. Participants were all of the sudden more reluctant to obey. This unethical experiment showed researchers and fellow observers how humans obey powerful authority to almost fatal conditions. Rather than disobeying, humans will instinctively continue even when conditions are close to death. Milgrim’s results differ from Laupa. Unlike Milgrim’s results, Laupa’s were less shocking, literally. The process involved students who were appointed as conflict managers or honor patrol. The chosen ones were taught to approach students to resolve arguments such as turn-taking. Laupa required 80 children from four classes: first grade, third grade, fifth grade, and seventh grade. Subjects were then put in situations where they must chose to listen to another person. For example, the scientist listed a few such as la dy versus former peer authority. This example is fundamental to the understanding of obedience. This illustration baffles children because they are put in a situation where the lady has adult status, which shows authority but no knowledge, but the former peer authority shows knowledge but no adult status like the previous lady. Laupa’s case proves that children are a biased subject to chose for the obedience in Milgrim’s case because children have a different way of thinking compared to adults who have prior experience to the social world. Children’s naive way of thinking benefits them since they are not interested in social system that adults are in everyday. Common sense would tell us that most people believe obedience is a critical aspect in social life and plays a great role in maintaining social order. On the contrary, every human being at different ages posses different aspirations that reflect their behavior. While some people respect authority by obeying, many do not, such as criminals or the students in detention. In Milgrim’s study, it is obvious that almost everyone respected authority possibly because they were under the impression that there were greater consequences or that they were in dire need to comply. In Laupa’s study, however, it showed that children were doubtful to peer authority and even adult authority. While some children are less timid than others, children have the instinct to question others because younger people are unaware of the social status adult figures hold. When comparing the two cases studies by Milgrim and Laupa, observers would agree that from childhood, people identify authority and obey them according to their figure in society or the status they hold.