Obedience to Authority

1584 Words7 Pages
Do you obey all orders given to you in life? To what extent should you obey and who should you obey? Have you ever been told to do something against your will? We hear commands, directions, and instructions on a daily basis. What exactly is obedience and what exactly is authority? Obedience is where a person acts in response to an order from another individual who is usually an authority figure over them such as a parent, teacher, boss, or police officer. Authority is the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. From the time we are just children, as far back as we can remember; we have been given commands, directions, and instructions from authority figures in our life. It starts out with your parents, grandparents, babysitter, and eventually teachers, coaches, and bosses. Everyone, no matter who you are, has someone to answer to on a daily basis. Why do we for the most part obey and just do whatever we are told to do? Perhaps because that is what we have been trained to do our whole lives by our parents, teachers, and interactions with others. If we choose not to do what we are told, then most of the time there are consequences. Most people are afraid to disobey authority because they are afraid of the outcome and embarrassment. If we didn’t have authority figures in our lives then we probably would not know right from wrong, and the world would be absolute chaos. Stanley Milgram did a study in 1961 at Yale University to see just how obedient most people are and the results scared just about everyone. He wanted to see the affect authority figures had on ordinary people. He also wanted to see just how far someone will go just to get rewarded, and what limits people will go to disobey. He set up his experiment using three people; the experimenter, the teacher, and the learner. The teacher and the learner could not see each other
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