Milgram believed they acted as a mechanism to help people cope with the strain of having to obey an immoral command. Agentic shift , people usually operate in an autonomous state behaving voluntarily and aware of the consequences following their actions. When Milgram’s participants were debriefed , many reported that they knew it was wrong to deliver dangerous electric shocks, but that they felt the experimenter was responsible and not them. Authoritarian personality is another explanation of obedience. It is that an individuals personality may make them more or less inclined to obey an authority figure.
Natural Power: The Ansel Adams Project Power: just the word, creates a feeling of authority and righteousness. There is too, that feeling of power that is mischievous, uncontrollable, and troublesome. People strive for the ‘top’, to be the best, which is admirable. It must, however, come respectably. The strive for power and control can change people; it can cause many to betray their own - to become the ‘controller.’ Is it because we want to be in control, or is it because we don’t want to be controlled; ruled.
Many of them are about being aware of the impact of decisions on one’s own feeling of protection. It can be considered to be self-serving and callous. Because the problem with this is that his theory is overwhelmingly cruel. Throuhgout the text, it can easily be observed that he supports the regime of violence so as to maintain power. For example, according to Machiavelli, it may be necessary to be violent towards disobedient people and Machiavelli(1532) says “The prince should make himself feared in a such way that, if he is not loved, at least
A Comparative Critique of “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: A Source of Sadism” and “The Perils of Obedience” How do we respond to authority? Obedience is defined as dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person or group of people. It is usually referred to as a positive aspect, but in the case of “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram, in which obedience to authority causes other people harm, it can easily be argued as an extremely negative factor. Stanley Milgram, a psychology professor at Yale University conducted an experiment to see if participants would either violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure or refuse those demands. In “The Perils of Obedience”, Milgram was trying to prove a point that shows how far someone will go to be obedient to the authority.
People can obey morally conflicting orders if they vicariously carry out these commands as the will of their authoritarian. Ordinary people can, and have, been known to act completely out of their self-defined character under stressful situations. We’ve seen documented cases of this; in particular I’m referring to “The Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted by Philip Zimbardo (389). Here was an experiment where 21 Stanford students were selected to become role players in a prison environment. To eliminate any preference for the students, they were randomly assigned their roles, half of them would become the guards of the prison and the other half would be prisoners.
During the agentic state an individual may feel moral strain, moral strain is when a person may be aware that the order they're following is immoral or goes against their moral views but they feel unable to disobey and continue the behaviour anyway. When in the agentic state the individual is acting as an agent for others, they do not feel responsible for their own actions as they believe responsibility falls to the authority figure giving the order. As this gives a clear description of obedience, society can learn from and aim to avoid future events similar to Mai Lai massacre. There has been much researcher into obedience through many studies including Milgram & Hofling, both these studies were lab experiments so any findings from the data would be considered high in validity and therefore any changes made to society from the theory would likely be worthwhile. However agency theory is more of a description than an evaluation of obedience, therefore the theory is incomplete and other theories, such as social power theory it is an alternative explanation for obedience, as a result of this any changes society makes on the basis of agency theory may be invalid and useless as the theory itself may be incorrect/incomplete.
Coercive Power that was discussed by French and Raven strongly sticks out in this case. Coercive Power depends on fear. The person with coercive power has the ability to inflict punishment or aversive consequences on another person. The Honor Code and the individuals that sit on the board have this type of power over the cadets. Since coercive power is more of a concept, but fits well within this case, the theory that works along with the power concept is the social exchange theory.
He is a foil to the character of Nurse Ratched, who tries to create order by playing on the weaknesses of the inmates in an attempt to get them to conform to social norms. Nurse Ratched is symbolic society and the pressures it applies on the individual to fit in. McMurphy’s character, on the other hand, is representative of the idea that we can change the structure of society and change it if we have the courage to. McMurphy challenges the
Also from these examples, we can see how an increase in power can lead to unethical behavior. It is unethical in the sense that when one gains this power or control, he/she feels that he/she has earned the right or authority to do so with total disregard for human rights. Ultimately, authority with total control destroys the honesty of what is right and wrong completely. To be human is to make mistakes but if a society is modeled after the leadership of a human with supreme authority, corruption is bound to occur. References Kiernan, B.
The case scenario on Abu Ghraib prison scandal has joined accountability and ethics together .The acts of torture and humiliation have undermined the military’s reputation and diminished the standing of the U.S. around the world which is unethical to the code of conduct of US intelligence. The spectacular nature of the scandal demands an examination of how ethical considerations play out in an accountability framework. Accountability for moral lapses and unethical behaviors is qualitatively different than it is for political or technical missteps. When you look at the definition of ethic as the standards of behavior that tell us how human beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find themselves-as friends, parents, children, citizens, businesspeople, teachers, professional that explains that the Abu Ghraib scandal is not ethically defensible. Making good ethical decisions requires a trained sensitivity to ethical issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a decision and weighing the considerations that should impact our choice of a course of action.There were confusing and conflicting demands made upon those responsible for the operations of the prison, but the way they reacted to those demands was wrong and immoral.