Obedience can be broadly defined as a type of social influence in human behavior, including but not limited to the extent to which we influenced by other people in relation to following a direct order, as opposed to responding to social pressure, real or imagined, which would be classified as compliance. Note that the person giving an order is usually perceived as having significant authority and the power to punish when obedience is not met. According to Fiske (1993) authority figures manifest the phenomenon of “social power” that allows them to create desired obedience when it should or should not be received through anxiety about the consequences of disobedience. This hierarchical figure changes depending on the social context, time or age of the person who obeys. For example, a relationship between teacher and student or a relationship between parent and child is based on principles of age and status. Another example, this time based on conduct authority, would be a relationship between prisoner and prison guard such as that explored by Zimbardo's 1973 conformity study, which highlighted the importance of the situation in explaining conformity to brutality roles against of prisoners in the late 1960s in the United States. A lot of research has been conducted on obedience, and many research studies have highlighted the importance of a number of variables, which have revolutionized the way we perceive the occurrence of a variety of atrocities in the real world. The essay will focus on historical examples of obedience and how these can explain examples such as the behavior of the Nazis and Hitler during the Holocaust, the Abu Gharaib events in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, as well as the My Lai massacre near Quang Ngai, Vietnam, among others. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the most historically significant examples of influential obedience research would be Stanley Milgram's original 1963 obedience study. Inspiration for the study arose from the 1961 Nuremberg trials, specifically the trial and subsequent execution of Adolf Eichmann, the late Nazi soldier who was famously quoted (following his orders was the) “most important thing in my life.” The quote inspired Milgram to formulate his first hypothesis: "Germans are different." After months of research preparation, he developed his own baseline study, to which he could compare all others. The original study consisted of 40 male participants divided into teachers and students. A word association game was played with flashcards and when the pupil gave the wrong card to a question, the teacher was asked to give the pupil an electric shock, which increased with each subsequent error up to a maximum of 450 volts, a deadly shock discharge. All participants believed the shocks were real, and when they did not want to administer them, they were given a sequence of prompts by an experimenter dressed in a lab coat. One major group of researchers estimated that 1-3% obeyed, while in reality 65% ​​showed full obedience at the highest shock voltage. In a replication of the study carried out to precisely define the root cause of obedience, several situational variables were manipulated during the performance of the original procedure, uniformity, proximity and location. Interestingly, all situational variables had a marked impact on the rate of obedience. Moving the headquarters from Yale University to a dilapidated office caused a declineof obedience from 65% to 47.5%. Proximity of teacher and student in the same room caused a 40% reduction in obedience, while changing the experimenter wearing a lab coat to a civilian one caused the most dramatic 65% to 20% reduction in obedience. overall obedience. Similar findings were studied from the 1975 uniform obedience field study by Bickman et al. who carried out an experiment in New York City in which three different people wearing three different uniforms asked 152 passersby to obey requests such as "put a dime in the meter", "stay on the other side of the bus stop", and "pick up that rubbish" '. Across three uniforms, a milkman produced an average obedience level of 56%, while the security guard uniform achieved well over double the obedience at 89% compared to the civilian uniform (39%), not only supporting Milgram's studies, but also providing a basis for the interpretation of atrocities involving situational factors, such as the Holocaust. More than 6 million Jews, Gypsies and members of other minority groups were killed during the Holocaust and, the above research shows that, just like the experimenter, Hitler and Stalin had legitimacy of authority as they had the power to punish, a professional uniform, hierarchical status and closeness to their soldiers. Evidence from one Nazi officer, Eichmann, gives us more insight into why so many officers may have complied. This may also give us a greater understanding of the 2003/2004 events in Abu Gharaib prison, where American military guards carried out violent, sexual and humiliating acts on Baghdadi's prisoners, although in this case it is still disputed whether the main trial was l obedience or compliance, or a mixture of both, which is an important argument to make, since more often than not there are many explanations for a phenomenon and it seems plausible that obedience research should be questioned in terms of validity. It is unacceptable to reject contrary theories. Zimbardo's 1973 study showed that some of their guards identified more with their role than others. For example, 1/3 of prison guards actively empathized with prison guards, offering them cigarettes and restoring privileges. Fromm 1973 also accused Zimbardo of ignoring the impact of dispositional influences and relying too much on situational effects, which is a finding that has been studied by many other researchers and which we will discuss later in the essay. Legitimacy of authority, another socio-psychological explanation of obedience concerns the theory of the agentic state. Autonomy is the exact opposite of Agency and means being free to make your own choices without being influenced by the desires of others. Agency means that the person carrying out the order has gone through the agentic shift. Moving from autonomy to agency involves perceiving others as an authority figure across the social hierarchy and being able to fulfill requests as if they were not conducted personally, that is, through the wishes of one's master or leader. Constraining Factors allow the person to perform the activity while minimizing the effect of anxiety on the person by shifting blame or ignoring the consequences. This socio-psychological phenomenon is particularly useful for understanding the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. In 1968, 504 innocent civilians were executed by American soldiers. Women were gang raped and people were killed as they came out of their homes with their hands raised. The soldiers here responded like Nazi soldiers: they were just obeying orders. That iscould be explained through the agentive state and constraining factors that allowed them to minimize the personal distress felt similar to a defense mechanism. There are also a handful of other explanations for the My Lai massacre. Furthermore, as we have seen in all of these examples, destructive authority seems to be a recurring theme in all of these atrocities. This occurs when people in positions of power use their powers in a way that provides a basis for behaving in cruel and callous ways. Leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao have all abused their authority over time causing widespread pain and suffering. . Furthermore, it may be that dispositional factors play a more important role than situational factors. Another historical example of this was provided by Mandel (1998) who believes that situational factors provide an excuse or alibi, hence the " alibi of obedience" for evil behavior. In his view, this monocausal explanation is actually an insult to Holocaust survivors, implying that Nazi soldiers were themselves victims of situational factors beyond their control. In his research, Mandel (1998) draws attention to an example from the Holocaust that suggests that the behavior of Nazis simply cannot be explained through factors such as shifting authority to the agent. The notable incident was carried out by the German Reserve Police Battalion 101, Nazi soldiers who obeyed orders to shoot residents of a small town in Poland, despite the fact that the men had not been directly ordered to do so and were were offered to be assigned to other tasks instead if they preferred non-physical work. Since these men were not directly ordered to kill civilians, this constitutes evidence against these explanations of obedience. The final explanation of obedience that will be explored in this essay is known as Authoritarian Personality, which is a particular personality type identified by Theodore Adorno when, like Milgram, he was interested in finding out why so many people during the Holocaust obeyed the authority figure and they rejected their human morality. In his early research, Adorno (1950) conducted surveys among 2000 middle-class white ethnic groups and asked their attitudes toward other racial groups in an inconspicuous way to identify their unconscious logic. What emerged was the potential of the fascism scale, widely known as the F scale. Its results showed that those who scored high on the scale exhibited certain tendencies in their personality, such as being aware of social class, status and respect, as well as being contemptuous of lower social classes and subservient to authority figures. They also found a high level of prejudice and a distinctive categorization of right or wrong, without any “grey areas”. They also believed that we needed strong and powerful leaders to enforce the rules in society. Adorno originally stated that the authoritarian personality originated from an excessively harsh and disciplined parenting style with few rewards or reinforcements, but severe punishment for any perceived wrongdoing on the part of the child causing resentment scapegoating towards others perceived as lower in social class. The description of the Authoritarian Personality type seems to go hand in hand with the knowledge of Hitler's Soldiers and Supporters in the Holocaust due to their high prejudice against Jewish citizens and punishment of those who appeared to support them. also be used as an explanation for a.