This essay is aimed primarily at graduates or other people going out into the world, although decisions regarding obedience to authority and conformity are not unique to any age group. I personally find this topic fascinating and hope it will be of some general interest to others and possibly spur some additional thought.
Whatever else you do in your life remember two things:
1. Always question authority
2. Be a non-conformist at least until you are sure what you are conforming to.
Non-questioning obedience to authority, and conformity, can cause problems that range on a continuum from the trivial to earth shattering.
A trivial example of conformity might be wearing the "right" brand of jeans.
There is some middle ground such as in a workspace where blind conformity or obedience to authority can result in more serious problems. Cases where what appears to be an obviously "wrong" idea to an individual is taken on by a group as the "right" idea. This could range from something minor like the latest flavor of the month improvement plan to something major like the Challenger disaster.
Earth shattering examples range from Fascism (and maybe other ism) to Bosnia to Rwanda to the Middle East, Northern Ireland, September 11th, or any other example of extreme inhuman, inhumane, less than human, behaviour on the part of one group of people that harms another.
There are two well known social science experiments that deal with questioning authority and conformity. One performed by Stanley Milgram and the other by Solomon Asch.
Let's start with the Asch conformity experiment.
This was a simple experiment where a group of 8 to 10 people were told they were being given a vision test, and asked to compare one line on a piece of paper and select a line of equal length from three lines on another piece of paper. It was obvious which lines were of equal length, in other words the "right" answer was obvious.
Only one person in the group was the actual test subject.
The rest of the people in the group were instructed to give the wrong answer on 12 of the 18 trials in order to see the impact on the test subject's answer.
As you can see, the task is simple, and the correct answer is obvious. Asch asked the participants to give their answers aloud. He repeated the procedure with 18 sets of bars. Asch arranged for the real subject to be the next-to-the-last person in each group to announce his answer so that he would hear most of the incorrect responses before giving his own.
A high percentage, on the order of 1 out of 3 people, "went along to get along" and agreed that the wrong answer was right.
Asch said of the results,
"The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."
Source: Solomon Asch social psychology experiment from www.age-of-the-sage.org.
A second fascinating (disturbing and frightening might be better adjectives) social science experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram.
You've probably seen or heard of the Milgram experiment.
The setup involved an official researcher with proper uniform (the authority figure), a test subject, and a person in another room who was supposed to answer questions provided by the test subject over an intercom.
The test subject was instructed by the authority figure to ask the questions and for each one the person in the other room got wrong to initiate a "punishment" in the form of an electric shock.
The test subject could not see the person they were questioning, but they could hear the faked cries of pain when they administered the shocks (or in some cases what sounded like loss of consciousness, or maybe even death). No one was actually being shocked but the test subject didn't know this. He or she thought they were giving painful and potential lethal shocks to another human being.
The test subject had a panel with a dial that could be used to increase the voltage to 450 volts. The panel had markings like "dangerous", "extremely dangerous" "may be lethal" for the increasing voltages.
"In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent of experimental participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were quite uncomfortable in doing so. No participant stopped before the 300-volt level. Variants of the experiment were later performed by Milgram himself and other psychologists around the world with similar results."
Source
Milgram experiment article from Wikipedia.
and from the same article -
Milgram summed up in the article "The Perils of Obedience" (Milgram 1974), writing:
"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."
There's not much to say about these experiments but, "wow" or "amazing" or "yeah that's what I thought", if that's what everyone else is saying :-)
Of course nothing to do with humanity is simple. Obedience to authority and conformity are important parts of society and other social conventions. Don't join the Marines if you want to question authority and be a non-conformist (or at least put your non-conforming questioning authority self on hold while you are in or you will be one unhappy camper).
I think the point is to be really careful about what or who you give your allegiance to. Stand up for what you know is right. Don't be afraid to go against the flow. Truly champion and appreciate diversity. It's what makes our world such a beautiful place.
References or more information can be found at -
Milgram experiment article from Wikipedia.
The Perils of Obedience, a Harper's Magazine article by Stanley Milgram.
Obediance to Authority
by Stanley Milgram.The Man Who Shocked the World
Asch conformity experiments article from Wikipedia.
Peer pressure article from Wikipedia.
Solomon Asch social psychology experiment from www.age-of-the-sage.org.
Diversity.
BBC - Radio 4 - Mind Changers discussion of Solomon Asch's work.
The Solomon Asch Center
True Believer
by the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer.And of course the classic on newspeak, doublethink and thoughtcrime, where we learned that 2+2 does not equal 5, no matter what someone or some institution tries to tell you, 1984
by George Orwell. Why smart people defend bad ideas - scottberkun.com
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