Obedience
When compliance is shown to an instruction or order from a person in authority, such as parents, teachers, leaders, or policemen, that behaviour is called obedience. Why people show obedience is easy to understand. Most often it is because if we disobey, some punishment might follow. Sometimes, it is because we believe that persons in authority must be obeyed. People in authority have effective means for enforcing their orders. Milgram conducted an experiment to show that individuals obey commands from people who are strangers. The experimenter informed the respondents in the study that they were participating in an experiment to study the effects of punishment on learning. The experiment was conducted on pairs. One person in each pair was the “learner”, whose work was to memorise pairs of words. The other participant was the “teacher”, who would read these words aloud and punish the learner when s/he made errors by giving her/him shock. The learner would make errors according to prearranged instructions. The teacher was asked to deliver a shock each time the learner made errors. The teacher was further told to increase the strength of the shock each time the learner made an error. In reality, no shocks were given. The instructions were so arranged that the teacher was faced with a dilemma — should s/he continue shocks even when they were increasingly painful? The experimenter kept on motivating the teacher to continue. In all, 65 per cent showed total obedience. Some participants, however, protested and asked the session to end. Milgram’s study suggests that even ordinary people are willing to harm an innocent person if ordered by someone in authority.
Why do people obey even when they know that their behaviour is harming others? Psychologists have identified several reasons for this. Some of these reasons are :
People obey because they feel that they are not responsible for their own actions, they are simply carrying out orders from the authority.
Authority generally possesses symbols of status (e.g., uniform, title) which people find difficult to resist.
Authority gradually increases commands from lesser to greater levels and initial obedience binds the followers for commitment. Once you obey small orders, slowly there is an escalation of commitment for the person who is in authority and one starts obeying bigger orders.
Many times, events are moving at such a fast speed, for example in a riot situation, that one has no time to think, just obey orders from above.
Social Identity
Have you ever asked the question “who am I?” What was your answer to this question? Probably your answer was that you are a hard-working, happy-go-lucky girl/boy. This answer tells you about your social identity which is one’s self-definition of who s/he is. This self-definition may include both personal attributes, e.g. hard working, happy-go-lucky, or attributes which you share with others, e.g. girl or boy. Although some aspects of our identity are determined by physical characteristics, we may acquire other aspects as a consequence of our interaction with others in society. Sometimes we perceive ourselves as unique individuals and at other times we perceive ourselves as members of groups. Both are equally valid expressions of self. Our personal identities derived from views of oneself as a unique individual, and social identities derived from groups we perceive ourselves to be members of, are both important to us. The extent to which we define ourselves either at personal or at social levels is flexible. From your own experience, you would realise that identification with social groups can have a great deal of importance for your selfconcept. How do you feel when India wins a cricket match? You feel elated and proud. You feel so because of your social identity as an Indian. Social identity is, thus, that aspect of our self-concept which is based on our group membership. Social identity places us, i.e. tells us what and where we are in the larger social context, and thus helps us to locate ourselves in society. You have a social identity of a student of your school. Once you have this identity of a student of your school, you internalise the values emphasised in your school and make these values your own. You strive to fulfil the motto of your school. Social identity provides members with a shared set of values, beliefs and goals about themselves and about their social world. Once you internalise the values of your school, this helps to coordinate and regulate your attitudes and behaviour. You work hard for your school to make it the best school in your city/state. When we develop a strong identity with our own group, the categorisation as ingroup and outgroup becomes salient. The group with which you identify yourself becomes the ingroup and others become the outgroup. The negative aspect of this own group and outgroup categorisation is that we start showing favouritism towards our ingroup by rating it more favourably in comparison to the outgroup, and begin devaluating the outgroup. This devaluation of the outgroup is the basis of a number of intergroup conflicts.
