Research On Obedience To Authority And Conformity To Role

Milgram

Do Research On Obedience to Authority and Conformity to Role.

This report deals with Milgram’s research conducted on authority’s obedience and Zimbardo’s Experiment on role conformity. Milgram’s study was based on conflict between authority and individual conscience. His experiment which he used was made up of three people; Teacher, Learner and the experimenter (Armstrong, Smith, Thomas, & Johnson, 2015). The research was performed with an intention of explaining how individuals conform passively and do not think in both directions and various duties which the top management gives. The two studies have a wide range of influence not only had impact in educational spheres (Pirker, & Kramer, 2018).). They also affect our general popular understanding and culture, such that each and everyone know that individuals adhere to demands of authority, regardless of the negative consequences (Bar?Tal, 2017). This work study has enlightened our understanding of human nature and also on conformity.

The main goal of Zimbardo was to examine if individuals would conform to social duties of a prisoner or prison guard, when both are located in a mock prison environment. (Elcheroth, & Reicher, 2017). He also tries to study whether behavior shown in prisons was because of external factors, environment and conditions of the prison, or internal dispositional factors, individuals themselves. The research carried out by Zimbardo and Milgram both obtained the same outcome (Forsyth, 2018).

Milgram

Aims: Milgram stood concerned with investigating the furthest individuals might go with observing orders which required damaging the other people. Milgram main concerned with knowing the degree in which a normal person may possibly be subjected and made to commit murders.

Hypothesis: Are the Germans different? This is Milgram’s main hypothesis.

Design: This is the act of giving the participant their roles which they have to perform according to the instruction given before the start of the experiment. Her we have the students who are to act as the learner they are being given question which they have to answer correctly. Then there is the experimenter whose role is to advice the teacher in case of any clarification. The role of the teacher is to read out questions which are in the form of words. Then there is the position of a chair which was used to impart punishment.

Participants: According to the public announcement made for the recruitment of persons for the research study. Individuals who are willing to help were absorbed for a lab experiment examining “learning”. Those that Participated sum up to 40 men and their age bracket ranked from 20 to 50, whose jobs ranged from those that do not possess any skills to professional (those that have the necessary skills).

Zimbardo

Procedure: the experiment started with the introduction of participants to each other who was really a partner to the investigator.  Straws were sketched to illustrate respective duties– teacher/learner – even though this stood fixed as well as confederate at all times ended to learner. An “experimenter” put on lab coat, white in color, played by the actor.

The person who acts as “learner” was then being strapped to a chair in a different room with electrodes. Once he has mastered several word pairs set for the learning purpose, the “teacher” then tests him by mentioning a word and inquiring the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices (Millard, 2014). The teacher was to follow instruction of administering an electric shock in case the learner makes a mistake, adding the level of shock each time. The shock generator marked a total of thirty switches started with 15 volts and end with 450 volts.  Learners from the study were not allowed to give wrong answers and incase of the wrong answer electric shock was to be given to learners. Where the teacher declined to give out shock he should get direction from experimenter for proper instruction. The Experimenter then provide standard instructions which states “please continue” or “the experiment wants you to continue”

In the experiment there exist four prods and incase one was not followed, then the experimenter give out another prod, and it was to be continued in that order.

65% of all that participates proceed to a higher level of 450 volts. Participants continued to 300 volts. This result shows that normal individuals will always go for the instructions provided by authority, up to a level of committing suicide to those who are not guilty (Passini, 2017). Obedience to authority is in us all human being and it depends on the way we were brought up.

Results of Milgram’s study: Milgram’s study has provided a good understanding of obedience, and it is also one that is mostly being used in discussing ethical treatment of people. The study continues to influence recent research, in that many people tried to refine his original work. So it provide basis of information to many people around the world (Zimmerman, 2018, January).  The study also provides a clear definition of conformity and obedience and the factors that affect them. It stated that conformity is yielding to group pressure and it entails sticking to one’s peers in a group situation. While obedience is the process of complying to the demands of the authority. Milgram’s finding has been used in a variety of culture. The study has also lead to the development of new invention with regards to factors that influence human behavior and how people can adapt according to the situation. It shows and teaches people the important of a group and how it influence human behaviors. Individual mostly follow group ideas in which they have got full trust as compares to what they believed on.

Results of Milgram’s study

Aims: To examine the willingness of individuals might adapt to duties of prisoner alongside guard in game-playing activity that replicated life in prison. Zimbardo’s main idea remained to determine if guards’ brutality in American prisons stayed because of guards’ sadistic characters or they are just factor being influence by prison environment.

Hypothesis: What are the factors that affect the brutality of guards in America? This is the main hypothesis in the study.

Design: The design is the actual role given to each participant in the experiment. Here we have the Guard who performs the work of the prison Guard. Their main duty is to provide security to the prisoners thus preventing them from escaping. Then we have the prisoner whose roles in the play resemble that of the real life prisoners. They are to be arrested and then taken to cells for proper punishment.

Participants: The main participant in the experiment study 21 people college (selected from 75 volunteers).

Procedure: Participants were unsystematically apportioned to perform duty of guard or prisoner in a pretend like environment (Forsyth, 2018). The investigator reserved prison simulation as “real life”. Arrest of inmates was done at respective residential, in notice absentia, and then transferred to the homegrown station (Frimer et.al, 2014). Khaki uniform, whistle, handcuffs and dark glasses were given to guards to maintain eye contact with inmates’ unbearable physical violence was not allowed. He observed the both prisoners and guards’ behavior.  They stood treated like that of the real offenders and photographed, fingerprinted as well as ‘booked’.  Consequently, blindfolding was done and transferred to the department (psychology) of  which was created to act as a prison within the campus, whereby  he had basement established as a custodial, with open windows alongside doors, small cells alongside unadorned walls.  Deindividuation procedure was commenced in cells (Zhai, 2017). Where the convicts reached at jail they stood deloused, exposed naked, had respective personal properties taken and subsequently locked away. They were then provided with bedding alongside clothes prison. They were then given uniforms, and identified solely on respective numbers. Clothes composed of a smock alongside respective numbers inscribed on them; however, there were no underclothing. Further, they had a chain around one ankle, and a chain around one ankle. They allocated to the 9 prisoners a total of 3 guards, taking a period change of 8 hours each (remaining guards stayed on call).

Prediction of Results: Under an extremely short while both prisoners and guards settle down into respective novel duties. During start of start of the experiment certain guards commence harassing convicts. The author planned that this study would take 14 days; however, on 6^th day, he accomplished the experiment. Real threat of somebody being mentally or physically damaged was evident in case it stood permitted to continue.

Authority Correlation from a Societal Perspective

Authority Correlation from a Societal Perspective: Social Illustrations of Obedience in young Adults.

Aims: To find out psychological structure that illustrates the dependency of young adult on the rules of the societies.

Hypothesis: Psychological structure positively influences the dependency of young adult on the rules of the Societies.

Prediction of the Result: The result indicate that the Family that live together has an important role in determining the ability of young adult to subordinate and assign, reproducing the essential social norms of staying together and the basic adaptation to authorities, that are important for the establishment of rules in the Society. It is clear that societies establish system of values, beliefs, representations and norms to interpret and understand the social events.

Aim: To examine whether individuals might conform to social roles in community health care when put in a mock healthcare environment.

Hypothesis: behavior displayed by healthcare facilities positively relate to internal dispositional factors.

Prediction of Results: It is expected that the study will reveal that people will conform to roles in a community healthcare facility when put in a mock healthcare environment. This is because conformity to social roles denotes where a person embraces a specific behavior alongside belief whereas in a given social situation. This will thus help in defining and giving roles to people in any context and to evaluate how such roles can be effectively achieved. Conformity is based on the laid down structures and hence people will follow what has been structured. Therefore, my intended study is meant to showcase that people are conforming to roles based on the situation they are placed.

Milgram’s study: Milgram’s obedience to authority study becomes the most educative contribution in field of social psychology. Though Milgram performed experimental examination, his well-known outcome was the first approved trial run – the remote condition and its 65% completion rate. Confirming on several unpublished papers from different articles wrote by Milgram confirm ancient beginnings and initial growth of obedience experiments. The first section shown earlier techniques which initiated the formation of his fundamental study and then enlighten the roles in the research work.  The next sections examine changes in research development of actual finding and then turn them to reality, taking into consideration various fact finding processes invented during the initial studies. All portions light up Milgram’s first uses of several manipulative means and various improvements put in place in the research study. The actual step by step improvement went on until Milgram became certain of getting a good result from the initial study an outcome which is different to what individuals believe on behaviors (Supriadi, & Pheng, 2018).

Behavior Displayed by Healthcare Facilities

Evaluation in Zimbardo’s studies: The study was performed by Zimbardo (1973) and the main concerned was to study the effects of De individuation, and this is where individual within a group feels a weakened sense of personal character and self-awareness. He developed mock prison which enclosed the items you would find in real prisons.  He gave male students the role of ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’ those that were given the role of prisoner were being arrested at their place of living and personally being taken to prison.  Guards is  then being issued with good prison uniform that is made up of whistle and handcuffs, dark glasses, both was  intended to reassure the guards to lose their personality; being given opportunity of maintaining a degree of order within the prison.

As the experiment continued, the effect of DE individuation becomes open; the guards started to be sadistic and began to use severe punishments to prisoners. The prisoners started to be more submissive and many became very emotionally unstable.

The study may look like it interfere with the psychologically damage those who participated but in fact it was one of the first experiments that was proven to explain conformity to role.

Milgram

Milgram’s study was ethically wrong this is because he violated the rules and regulation for ethical experiment study which was set out by the psychological society. The experiment avoided the following guidelines.

Deception: Milgram did not tell the participants the correct nature of the experiment and things that was to take place during the study hence deceiving the participants. The reactions and behavior of the participants would have been dissimilar in case they were working with confederate.

Right to withdrawal: The experimenter made it very difficult for the participant to withdraw this is because as one tries to move out he kept on motivating them by urging them to continue with process. According to the principles people have the right of withdrawal in case they feel that the experiment does not suit them. They should be allowed to make their own decision either to stay or continue with experiment study.

Informed consent: Those who participated consented to the study without being informed the clear aims of the experiment. The guidelines of ethics requires the researcher to state the main of the experiment to the participants so that both the team can have knowledge of what is taking place and without that the process is regarded to be unethical in nature.

Protection from psychological harm: Experiment may affected and damage the participant psychologically. After the end of the experiment the participants were never tested in order to find out if they could cope after the process. The process is important because they could have been harmed self-esteem.

Ethics In Zimbardo’s Study: The  Experiment was a study performed by creating  false prison to identify how authority given to ‘guards’ interfere with both the guard’s behavior and  ‘prisoners’. The study quickly changed, and it was not long before the set up started to look like that of an actual prison environment. The prisoners were subjected to abuse and were treated ruthlessly by the guards, and both started to believe they were in prison. Unethical nature of the experiment suggests it would be closed after duration of about six days. Regardless of the bad issue encountered in the study, the experiment continued to be significant to psychology and the method on how experiments are now conducted provides a platform for the research. It allowed researchers to know various aspects of how different people behave the way they do and why, and was also important aspect in the process of determining ethical guidelines (Hotchin, & West, 2018). The psychological harm those who participated suffered turn out to be one of the main factors in the review of ethical standards. One helpful aspect of the study was the improvements on ethical rules and the usage of people.

Conclusion:

To conclude both the two studies of Zimbardo’s conformity to role and that of Milgram,s obedience to authority provide a good understanding of factors that influence the behaviors of human being. We found out that ordinary individuals have greater chances of following orders provided by the authority as rules and regulations to the extent of damaging an innocent people. From the research experiment conducted it is true that obedience to authority is imparted to us all and it depends on how we are brought up. Therefore different people convey different behaviors depending on the environment in which they are brought up. We also found out that human being conform due to the fact that they want to exist where there are many people with different opinion due to the fact that most of them believe in team  and because they believed in team work that they are more informed than them (informational influence). This is because after the experiment, most of the participants did not really believe their conforming reply and some of the people believed in the group’s answer. Although they both encountered various problem in the process of their study which makes the result to be inaccurate, their finding help to impart knowledge to many people as most people use their findings as basis of extracting the required knowledge hence many researchers improved the work.(Goyne et al,2017).

References

.Elcheroth, G., & Reicher, S. (2017). Evil Leaders and Obedient Masses?. In Identity, Violence and Power (pp. 39-70). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Armstrong, A., Smith, M., Thomas, J., & Johnson, A. (2015). Consumerism and Higher Education: Pressures and Faculty Conformity. The William and Mary Educational Review, 3(2), 10.

Bar?Tal, D. (2017). Self?Censorship as a Socio?Political?Psychological Phenomenon: Conception and Research. Political Psychology, 38(S1), 37-65.

Forsyth, D. R. (2018). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning.

Frimer, J. A., Gaucher, D., & Schaefer, N. K. (2014). Political conservatives’ affinity for obedience to authority is loyal, not blind. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(9), 1205-1214.

Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. S. (2016). Introduction to sociology. WW Norton.

Goyne, A., Coates, W., Forsyth, G., Fowler, L., Gibbons, P., Woods, K., & Cullens, J. (2017). Abuse of power and institutional violence in the ADF: A culture transformed?. Australian Defence Force Journal, (201), 73

Ho, W. C. (2018). Conclusion and Implications: Values and Practices in Achieving the Chinese Dream in School Music Education. In Culture, Music Education, and the Chinese Dream in Mainland China (pp. 233-250). Springer, Singapore.

Hotchin, V., & West, K. (2018). Openness and Intellect differentially predict Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Personality and Individual Differences, 124, 117-123.

Millard, K. (2014). Revisioning obedience: Exploring the role of Milgram’s skills as a filmmaker in bringing his shocking narrative to life. Journal of Social Issues, 70(3), 439-455.

Passini, S. (2017). Subtle prejudice and conformism: the intergroup indifference. International Journal of Psychological Research, 10(1), 25-34.

Pirker, P., & Kramer, J. (2018). From Traitors to Role Models: Rehabilitation and Memorialization of Wehrmacht Deserters in Austria. In Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory (pp. 59-85). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Schwartz, M. S. (2017). Teaching Behavioral Ethics: Overcoming the Key Impediments to Ethical Behavior. Journal of Management Education, 1052562917701501.

Supriadi, L. S. R., & Pheng, L. S. (2018). Organizational Culture and Institutional Forces. In Business Continuity Management in Construction (pp. 75-100). Springer, Singapore.

Xie, Y., Chen, M., Lai, H., Zhang, W., Zhao, Z., & Anwar, C. M. (2016). Neural Basis of Two Kinds of Social Influence: Obedience and Conformity. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 10.

Zhai, Y. (2017). Values of deference to authority in Japan and China. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 58(2), 120-139.

Zimbardo, P. (2018). Exploring human nature and inspiring heroic social action. Diversity in Unity: Perspectives from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences.

Zimmerman, A. S. (2018, January). Cultivating Virtue in Teaching: The Role of the Personal, the Professional, and the Situational. In The Educational Forum (Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 97-110). Routledge.