What is obedience?
Obedience means doing what someone with authority tells you to do. Authority means a right to give orders, like a teacher, a parent, a police officer or a manager.
Obedience is different from conformity. In conformity, you copy people who are equal to you, and nobody gives an order. In obedience, there is a clear order from someone above you.
Obedience is often useful. Schools, hospitals and roads run safely because people follow rules. It becomes dangerous when people obey orders that harm others.
Milgram's obedience study
In the 1960s Stanley Milgram, a psychologist in the USA, wanted to know if ordinary people would hurt someone just because they were told to.
- 40 men took part. Each was the teacher. A friendly actor was the learner.
- For every wrong answer the teacher pressed a switch for a bigger shock: from 15 V up to 450 V. The shocks were fake, but the teacher believed they were real.
- If the teacher wanted to stop, the experimenter in a grey lab coat used calm prods such as "Please continue" and "You have no other choice, you must go on."
Result: 65% went to the top 450 V. All went to at least 300 V. Many sweated, shook or laughed nervously.
Problems with the study: it caused stress and used deception, so it would break today's ethics rules. Some people may have guessed the shocks were fake. Only American men were tested at first.
Agency theory: the agentic state
Milgram explained his results with agency theory.
- Autonomous state: you act on your own free will and feel responsible for what you do.
- Agentic state: you act as an agent of someone else. You feel the authority is responsible.
- The move from autonomous to agentic is the agentic shift. It happens when we see the person as a legitimate authority.
- People in the agentic state still feel moral strain: they know it is wrong. They reduce this strain by blaming the authority.
Agency theory explains why people obey in big systems, such as armies or companies, where everyone "just follows orders".
Situational factors in obedience
Milgram changed one thing at a time to see what mattered.
| Change | Fully obeyed |
|---|---|
| Normal lab at a famous university | 65% |
| Run-down office building (location) | about 48% |
| Learner in the same room (proximity) | 40% |
| Teacher had to press the learner's hand on a plate | 30% |
| Experimenter gave orders by phone | about 21% |
| "Ordinary person" in plain clothes gave orders (uniform) | 20% |
So obedience rises when the authority is close, has a uniform and a respected setting, and falls when the victim is close.
Dispositional factors: the authoritarian personality
A dispositional factor is something inside the person, like personality. Theodor Adorno and his team described the authoritarian personality.
- Great respect for authority and strong leaders.
- Looks down on people seen as lower or different.
- Sees the world in black and white, with fixed rules.
Adorno thought it came from a very strict childhood with harsh punishment. The child cannot show anger to the parents, so the anger is later pushed onto "weaker" groups. He measured it with the F-scale questionnaire.
Limits: the F-scale had a biased wording style, and it cannot explain why whole countries obeyed at the same time. Most psychologists say obedience comes from both the situation and the person.
Try it
In the 3D free play, tap each version of the study. Before you tap, predict the percentage. Which change made the biggest drop? Then think of one rule at your school. Is it obeyed because of the rule, or because of who gives it?
Key formulas and definitions
- Obedience = following an order from an authority
- Conformity = copying equals (no order)
- Milgram baseline: 65% to 450 V; 100% to 300 V
- Autonomous state โ agentic shift โ agentic state
- Situational: location, uniform, proximity ยท Dispositional: authoritarian personality (F-scale)
Worked examples
1. A student stays late because the principal told them to, though their friends are leaving. Is this obedience or conformity?
Obedience. There is a direct order from a person with authority (the principal). Conformity would be copying the friends.
2. Use agency theory to explain why a soldier follows an order he feels is wrong.
The officer is a legitimate authority, so the soldier makes the agentic shift. He sees himself as the officer's agent and feels the officer is responsible. He still feels moral strain but reduces it by blaming the officer.
3. In Milgram's study, why did obedience fall from 65% to 20% when an 'ordinary person' gave the orders?
The lab coat was a uniform that showed status and legitimacy. Without it, the person did not seem like a real authority, so fewer people made the agentic shift.
Common mistakes
- Saying Milgram's learner was really shocked. The shocks were fake; the learner was an actor.
- Mixing up obedience and conformity. Obedience needs an order from someone above you.
- Thinking only 'bad' people obey. Most ordinary people in Milgram's study obeyed.
- Saying the agentic state means people feel nothing. They feel moral strain but blame the authority.