Obedience is a type of social influence in which an individual carries out orders from an authoritative figure.
If you have ever taken out the trash because a parent told you too or done something at work because your boss told you to then you have experienced obedience to authority. This isn't really a big deal, it's just something we have to deal with in life. BUT...when the authoritative figure takes it too far then it becomes an issue...
For those of you who have not watched Conformity, it is a pretty accurate recollection of what actually happened in a McDonalds restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky in 2004. A prank phone call was made to manager Donna Jean Summers telling her that an employee had stolen money. The man on the phone claimed to be the police and asked that Louise Ogborn who was accused of stealing the money take part in a strip search. Long story short the requests made by the prank caller got increasingly weird and messed up and ended with Louise being sexually assaulted because the 'police officer' told the manager's fiance to do it. Similar prank calls were made in 70 other restaurants across the U.S and the managers of those restaurants complied with his requests every time. The employees then complied with what the manager told them to do as a result.
Below is an actual picture of CCTV footage of Louise in the office when this was happening.
Not really sure its was okay to make a move about this but there ya go...
This is a perfect example of when obedience to authority goes too far...
I'm sure that you are thinking to yourself 'that is ridiculous, why didn't Louise leave and why didn't Donna see how messed up this was and stop following the orders of 'the police man'??'
The scary thing is that research into obedience actually suggests that if put in this situation, most people would do the exact same thing.
Milgram's study of obedience in 1961 is well known whether you study psychology or not. Basically he got normal everyday members of the public to administer a fatal shock (450 volts) to a person who they thought was another a member of the public. The shocks weren't real but the member of the public didn't know that. The other person was screaming in pain and begging the researcher to let them go but the member of the public still continued to shock the person...all because the researcher told them to. The members of the public who were the giving the shocks were clearly distressed and did express that they did not want to do it...but over 60% of people went all they way and administered the fatal shock just because the researcher said they had to.
I am reading about these incidents and thinking to myself that I definitely would never do anything like this but the research and evidence says that we would.
The incidents discussed above were small in scale but serious.....put this on a larger scale and you have stuff like the holocaust going on...
Where do we draw the line?? How far does an authority have to push you before you say no??
