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Obedience: Why Do People Obey Authority?

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A person’s reasoning for performing actions and obeying orders is not usually based on one factor but many. Obedience has been a subject of experimentation and question for much of history and modern times, is no different. A person’s seemingly inherent willingness to obey orders even when they go against the person’s own ethics is affected by the person’s own inherent tendencies, the environment in which they act, and their relationship with the superior. A person starts obeying orders the day they are born. A person, right away, is told what to do by their parents who they trust. Obedience is instantly instilled in a person, whether it is between them and their parent, their teacher, etc. “For a significant part of an individual’s life, …show more content…
This trait of obedience is praised by teachers as being a good listener or easy to be taught; thus, being obedient in daily life is viewed as being better than disobedient. With obedience being viewed as the norm, it becomes easier for a person to obey malevolent orders and orders that go against their own ethics. A person’s obedience is affected by numerous factors. A person is more likely to trust a person in certain environments and in certain situations. In Milgram’s experiment, he found that many of his subjects obeyed the orders to “shock” another person. A subject’s willingness to “shock” the other person could be attributed to a variety of factors, one being the fact the experiment took place in a lab at Yale University. Because it is in a lab at Yale University, the subjects are more likely to obey, as shown in one of Milgram’s test subject’s response to continuing with …show more content…
A person’s psychological reasoning is affected by numerous things, some of which Erick Fromm points out in his article, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” He includes multiple types of obedience that can affect a person’s reaction to obedience. One of the types of obedience he describes is ‘autonomous obedience,’ which Fromm describes as “not an act of submission but one of affirmation” (125). This type of obedience is usually the most common form of obedience in a person’s daily life. Sometimes this person’s own affirmation of the orders is not always completely based on their own morals, but is sometimes influenced by morals and ethics that a superior instills in the person to be right. Even more drastic than this is ‘heteronomous obedience,’ which Fromm describes as “complete submission” (125). Thus, a person does not consider the orders to be malevolent at all, and or they do not consider their own ethics in this decision-making process. Furthermore, a person that is heteronomous obedient most often believes the superior to have their own best interest in their hands and the superior will not take advantage of them. A person’s own confidence in themselves also contributes to whether or not they will follow the order of the superior. Fromm describes “hav[ing] the courage to be alone, to err, and

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