Why are some of us able to resist authority — while the vast majority usually are not? Credit: Getty Images. Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex — the outermost layer of the front part the brain — they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population.
The question gets into philosophical topics like the nature — and neurological basis — of belief. While there is no clear scientific consensus, the Spinozan model is a strong contender.
It suggests that in order to understand a new idea or fact, our brain must, for a split-second, believe it completely. After a split second, you then can doubt or reject this new piece of information.
So instead of quite literally thinking twice about what an authority figure says, prefrontal cortex patients are more likely to take what they hear as given. If the prefrontal cortex is the seat of our ability to doubt and question authority, there may be a way in healthy people to strengthen our ability to do this. The prefrontal cortex has some plasticity. Education is one of the best ways to improve your ability to doubt, says Asp, and therefore your ability to think critically about things you might be told to do.
When an authority figure asks us to do something, we usually do it because we're led to believe in the cause behind their request, says Megan Birney, a psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of Chester at University Centre Shrewsbury. Milgram later ran a number of variations to the basic study, to find out more about the particular factors which might influence obedience. Obedience occurs when you are told to do something authority , whereas conformity happens through social pressure the norms of the majority.
Therefore, the person giving the order has a higher status than the person receiving the order. McLeod, S. Obedience to authority. Simply Psychology. Toggle navigation. Authority, as defined by Wikipedia, is the power or right to give orders, make decisions and enforce obedience; the right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another.
Positive authority is earned or given. For example: a teen is elected President of the Student Body at school or a teen demonstrates an ability to fix computers. This is legitimate positive authority. However, on the second day, the prisoners tried to rebel against the guards. The guards quickly moved to stop the rebellion by using both psychological punishment and physical abuse. In the ensuing days, the guards denied the prisoners food, water, and sleep; shot them with fire-extinguisher spray; threw their blankets into the dirt; forced them to clean toilet bowls with their bare hands; and stripped them naked.
At this point, a former student who was not involved with the study spoke up, declaring the treatment of the prisoners to be immoral. As a result, the researchers stopped the experiment early.
Arguably, this conclusion may be applied to the research team itself, which seemingly neglected ethical principles in the pursuit of their research goals. Zimbardo acted as an expert witness in the trial of Sergeant Chip Frederick, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for his role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Frederick was the army reservist who was put in charge of the night shift at Tier 1A, where the detainees were abused. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil.
We have to acknowledge it. Recent research by Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam suggests that this is indeed the case. The results of this study were entirely different than those found by Zimbardo. This study was also stopped early, but more because the guards felt uncomfortable in their superior position than because the prisoners were being abused. Again, the conclusions are clear—the specifics of the social situation, more than the people themselves, are often the most important determinants of behavior.
Raven identified five different types of power— reward power , coercive power , legitimate power , referent power , and expert power shown in Table 6. Understanding the types of power is important because it allows us to see more clearly the many ways that people can influence others. Reward power occurs when one person is able to influence others by providing them with positive outcomes. The variety of rewards that can be used by the powerful is almost endless and includes verbal praise or approval, the awarding of status or prestige, and even direct financial payment.
The ability to wield reward power over those we want to influence is contingent on the needs of the person being influenced. Power is greater when the person being influenced has a strong desire to obtain the reward, and power is weaker when the individual does not need the reward.
A boss will have more influence on an employee who has no other job prospects than on one who is being sought after by other corporations, and expensive presents will be more effective in persuading those who cannot buy the items with their own money.
Because the change in behavior that results from reward power is driven by the reward itself, its use is usually more likely to produce public compliance than private acceptance. Coercive power is power that is based on the ability to create negative outcomes for others, for instance by bullying, intimidating, or otherwise punishing.
Bosses have coercive power over employees if they are able and willing to punish employees by reducing their salary, demoting them to a lower position, embarrassing them, or firing them.
And friends can coerce each other through teasing, humiliation, and ostracism. In many cases, power-holders use reward and coercive power at the same time—for instance, by both increasing salaries as a result of positive performance but also threatening to reduce them if the performance drops.
Because the use of coercion has such negative consequences, authorities are generally more likely to use reward than coercive power Molm, Coercion is usually more difficult to use, since it often requires energy to keep the person from avoiding the punishment by leaving the situation altogether.
And coercive power is less desirable for both the power-holder and the person being influenced because it creates an environment of negative feelings and distrust that is likely to make interactions difficult, undermine satisfaction, and lead to retaliation against the power-holder Tepper et al. As with reward power, coercive power is more likely to produce public compliance than private acceptance.
Furthermore, in both cases the effective use of the power requires that the power-holder continually monitor the behavior of the target to be sure that he or she is complying. This monitoring may itself lead to a sense of mistrust between the two individuals in the relationship. The power-holder feels perhaps unjustly that the target is only complying due to the monitoring, whereas the target feels again perhaps unjustly that the power-holder does not trust him or her.
Whereas reward and coercive power are likely to produce the desired behavior, other types of power, which are not so highly focused around reward and punishment, are more likely to create changes in attitudes private acceptance as well as behavior. In many ways, then, these sources of power are stronger because they produce real belief change. Legitimate power is power vested in those who are appointed or elected to positions of authority , such as teachers, politicians, police officers, and judges, and their power is successful because members of the group accept it as appropriate.
We accept that governments can levy taxes and that judges can decide the outcomes of court cases because we see these groups and individuals as valid parts of our society. Individuals with legitimate power can exert substantial influence on their followers. Those with legitimate power may not only create changes in the behavior of others but also have the power to create and change the social norms of the group. In some cases, legitimate power is given to the authority figure as a result of laws or elections, or as part of the norms, traditions, and values of the society.
In other cases, legitimate power comes more informally, as a result of being a respected group member. People who contribute to the group process and follow group norms gain status within the group and therefore earn legitimate power.
In some cases, legitimate power can even be used successfully by those who do not seem to have much power.
After Hurricane Katrina hit the city of New Orleans in , the people there demanded that the United States federal government help them rebuild the city.
Although these people did not have much reward or coercive power, they were nevertheless perceived as good and respected citizens of the United States. Many U. This might not always work, but to the extent that it does it represents a type of legitimate power—power that comes from a belief in the appropriateness or obligation to respond to the requests of others with legitimate standing.
People with referent power have an ability to influence others because they can lead those others to identify with them. A young child who mimics the opinions or behaviors of an older sibling or a famous sportsperson, or a religious person who follows the advice of a respected religious leader, is influenced by referent power.
Referent power generally produces private acceptance rather than public compliance Kelman, The influence brought on by referent power may occur in a passive sense because the person being emulated does not necessarily attempt to influence others, and the person who is being influenced may not even realize that the influence is occurring.
In other cases, however, the person with referent power such as the leader of a cult may make full use of his or her status as the target of identification or respect to produce change.
In either case, referent power is a particularly strong source of influence because it is likely to result in the acceptance of the opinions of the important other.
Experts have knowledge or information, and conforming to those whom we perceive to be experts is useful for making decisions about issues for which we have insufficient expertise. Expert power thus represents a type of informational influence based on the fundamental desire to obtain valid and accurate information, and where the outcome is likely to be private acceptance. Conformity to the beliefs or instructions of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and computer experts is an example of expert influence; we assume that these individuals have valid information about their areas of expertise, and we accept their opinions based on this perceived expertise particularly if their advice seems to be successful in solving problems.
Expert power is increased for those who possess more information about a relevant topic than others do because the others must turn to this individual to gain the information. You can see, then, that if you want to influence others, it can be useful to gain as much information about the topic as you can.
Having power provides some benefits for those who have it. Despite these advantages of having power, a little power goes a long way and having too much can be dangerous, for both the targets of the power and the power-holder himself or herself.
According to random assignment to experimental conditions, one half of the supervisors were able to influence the workers through legitimate power only, by sending them messages attempting to persuade them to work harder. The other half of the supervisors were given increased power. In addition to being able to persuade the workers to increase their output through the messages, they were also given both reward power the ability to give small monetary rewards and coercive power the ability to take away earlier rewards.
Although the workers who were actually preprogrammed performed equally well in both conditions, the participants who were given more power took advantage of it by more frequently contacting the workers and more frequently threatening them. The students in this condition relied almost exclusively on coercive power rather than attempting to use their legitimate power to develop positive relations with the subordinates.
At the end of the study, the supervisors who had been given extra power rated the workers more negatively, were less interested in meeting them, and felt that the only reason the workers did well was to obtain the rewards. The conclusion of these researchers is clear: having power may lead people to use it, even though it may not be necessary, which may then lead them to believe that their subordinates are performing only because of the threats.
Although using excess power may be successful in the short run, power that is based exclusively on reward and coercion is not likely to produce a positive environment for either the power-holder or the subordinate. Although this research suggests that people may use power when it is available to them, other research has found that this is not equally true for all people—still another case of a person-situation interaction.
One type of person who has power over others, in the sense that the person is able to influence them, is leaders. Leaders are in a position in which they can exert leadership , which is the ability to direct or inspire others to achieve goals Chemers, ; Hogg, Leaders have many different influence techniques at their disposal: In some cases they may give commands and enforce them with reward or coercive power, resulting in public compliance with the commands.
In other cases they may rely on well-reasoned technical arguments or inspirational appeals, making use of legitimate, referent, or expert power, with the goal of creating private acceptance and leading their followers to achieve. Leadership is a classic example of the combined effects of the person and the social situation. One approach to understanding leadership is to focus on person variables.
One personality variable that is associated with effective leadership is intelligence. Being intelligent improves leadership, as long as the leader is able to communicate in a way that is easily understood by his or her followers Simonton, , Leaders who have expertise in the area of their leadership will be more effective than those who do not. Because so many characteristics seem to be related to leadership skills, some researchers have attempted to account for leadership not in terms of individual traits but in terms of a package of traits that successful leaders seem to have.
Charismatic leaders are leaders who are enthusiastic, committed, and self-confident; who tend to talk about the importance of group goals at a broad level; and who make personal sacrifices for the group.
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