Conformity & Obedience

Conformity and Obedience
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Conformity and Obedience
In the study of human behavior, obedience remains one of the factors widely investigated and documented in explaining actions. Unlike compliance that involves acting as required by the norms or peers, obedience is acting as commanded by a powerful figure (Haslam & Reicher, 2014). As such, therefore, it requires an individual to do against beliefs, values, and principles as a way of fulfilling the command from an authority. According to many psychologists, this remains the reason many atrocities have happened in the past, involving torturous acts against a fellow person. In this study, both conformity and obedience are investigated to understand the way they influence human behaviors.
Question One
In an attempt to understand obedience to authority, Stanley Milgram set a social experiment to understand the extent to which people can obey authority by harming others. He named it The Milgram Experiment (Russell, 2017). Conclusively, the experiment reveals that established routine, cognitive dissonance, and argentic shift resulted in obedience to authority.
Established routine refers to the activities performed as part of the ultimate procedures. From the experiment, Milgram concluded that people always treat the things they are expected to do as a routine (Russell, 2017). Cognitive dissonance was also a factor evident in the experiment. According to Tompkins and Lawley (2009), it is the situation in which subjects find themselves when they are commanded to do something that conflicts with their beliefs, values, and principles.

Consequently, an individual can experience stress and discomfort when trying to choose between two cognitions; the wrong in obeying the command and the wrong in disobeying the command so as not to violate personal beliefs and values (Tompkins & Lawley, 2009). Finally, argentic shift refers to the way people view responsibilities of their actions. Naturally, people can agree to do something based on their willingness to take the reward or punishment. However, by shifting the responsibility to another figure such as the authority, people become capable of doing even things that harm others in the sense that they acted as agents.
In combination, these three factors influence human behaviors. People acting under command take it that it is their responsibility and as routine to obey the powerful (Haslam & Reicher, 2014). According to the Milgram Experiment, people would rather not disobey the authority. Even when their beliefs conflict, they may want to justify the actions by assigning the responsibility to the powerful instead of themselves (Russell, 2017). According to Milgram, people who seemed afraid to inflict pain on others were talked into it by being told that the authority would take the responsibility. Entrapment follows, and it becomes easy and comfortable for them to obey even difficult commands.
Question Two
In doubt, Milgram Experiment adequately brings the reason the popular holocaust, pioneered by Adolf Eichmann who Sabini and Silver (1980) says was responsible for the deportation, torture, and killing of Jews in political camps. People who kept this holocaust, however, were entrapped in responsibilities. Sabini and Silver (1980) have tried to discuss responsibility in relation to the intent and the way reflected in the actions of those who participated in the holocaust. In this study, we categorize responsibility into two; technical and moral.
Technical responsibility refers to the fulfillment of expectations in a certain part of a process (Sabini & Maury, 1980, p.193). Here, an example of a boss and employees can help understand well. A boss is responsible for planning while the employee is responsible for the part assigned to execute. As such, we can conclude that it is a responsibility related to a given situation. Based on this, and as Sabin and Silver put it, it could be that Eichmann and other bureaucrats were only doing their job (Sabini & Maury, 1980, p.195) to support their families by following orders. Moral responsibility, on the other hand, refers to the fulfillment of expectations based on right or wrong. Therefore, being morally responsible means that one is responsible for the things they do.
People who helped in holocaust seemed confused between the two types of responsibilities by thinking that they were only doing their job and their superiors were responsible for the deaths of the Jews. This too applies in the case of those in Milgram Experiment. My opinion is that the same case happened in Abu Ghraib prison (BBC News, 2018; Antiwar.com, 2009, August 07). The US soldiers carried out atrocities against the detainees thinking that they were only taking orders and their commanders above the chain of command were responsible.
Question Three
In developing the understanding of human obedience and conformity further, this section analyses the Rwanda conflict of 1994. The conflict between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic tribes who were political rivals began on April 7, 1994, and lasted for 100 days (Foden, 2014). Hutu tribe that forms the majority in Rwanda attacked and killed as many as 800,000 Tutsi people. Ultimately, close to a million citizens were murdered while 2 million people became refugees (Foden, 2014).
Similar to the situation in Abu Ghraib prison, the Rwanda Genocide involved an aspect of the obedience to authority. According to Foden (2014), Hutu local and the government officials incited the citizens to take up weapons against the Tutsi. Also, the national army and police forces provided perpetrators who killed not only key Tutsi leaders but the common citizens as well. The military set up barricades and other social control measures that required national identity card for passage. This helped them identify those of Tutsi ethnicity and execute them. Others from Hutu tribe were recruited to help in ethnic cleansing of Tutsi people by torture, killing and raping their victims.
The Rwanda conflict occurred due to obedience to authority, in which two concepts derived from Milgram Experiment apply. One, the military and recruited citizens from Hutu tribes took it upon themselves to fulfill as expected by their political and government officials. Therefore, they routinely attacked, tortured, raped and killed their neighbors. Although soldiers and Hutus could have felt is wrong to attack and kill others, the conviction by their leaders made them overcome the discomfort related cognitive dissonance. Finally, they opted to believe that they were not responsible for attacking their neighbors by transferring the responsibility to the authority.
Conclusion
In brief, obedience to obey and conformity are two factors that affect human behaviors. And even though one may be conscious that they are acting against their beliefs, they may continue to harm other people in the sense that they are doing their job, and they are not responsible for their actions. However, Sabini and Silver explain that everyone is responsible either technically or morally to their action. Together with Milgram Experiment, the study by Sabini and Silver help achieve a deeper understanding of how world’s greatest evils against humanity such as Rwanda Genocide, Holocaust, and torture in Abu Ghraib happened. Consequently, we can understand how to avoid similar occurrences through modification of human behaviors.
References
Antiwar.com. (2009, August 07). Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos. Retrieved February 06, 2018, from https://original.antiwar.com/news/2006/02/17/abu-ghraib-abuse-photos/
BBC News. (2018). BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraqi abuse photos spark outrage. News.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 6 February 2018, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3672901.stm
Foden, G. (2014). The facts of killing. New Statesman, 143(5204), 44-47.
Haslam, A., & Reicher, S. (2014). Just obeying orders? New Scientist, 223(2986), 28-31.
John P. Sabini and Maury Silver (1980). In Survivors, victims, and perpetrators: essays on the Nazi Holocaust (Hemisphere Publishing, 1980)
Russell, N. (2017). An Important Milgram-Holocaust Linkage: Formal Rationality. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 42(3), 261-292.
Tompkins, P., & Lawley, J. (2009). Cognitive Dissonance and Creative Tension. Cleanlanguage.co.uk. Retrieved 6 February 2018, from http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/262/1/Cognitive-Dissonance-and-Creative-Tension/Page1.html