Sie sind auf Seite 1von 8

Carey 1

Daniella Carey
Janna Bunosky
Humanities
February 17, 2016

Group Question: Why do people follow crazy leaders?


Psychologists point of view: Why do people obey orders when they know they
are wrong?
Obedience is the act of meeting rules or standards. Usually, obedience is a good
thing; most rules are there to keep us safe and in line. Obeying traffic laws, for example,
keeps people safe while operating fast-moving vehicles. But when and why do people
obey orders when they know theyre wrong? Obedience depends on how a person
interprets what is moral, the environment, and his/her role in the situation.
Studies have shown that there are stages of moral development that really affect
how a person will comply with rules or standards given by an authority. Saul McLeod
published an article about Lawrence Kohlberg's research on moral development.
Kohlberg conducted an experiment to see if people's moral reasoning changed as they
got older (McLeod). For this experiment, he asked only boys a series of questions and
recorded their reasoning. He saw that there are different levels of moral reasoning and
they change as people get older. Kohlberg also found that many people dont attain all
of these levels and can only proceed in the following order: Pre- Conventional Morality,
Conventional Morality and Postconventional Morality.

Carey 2

The first level is Pre-Conventional Morality with two stages (Kohlberg). Stage one
is obedience and punishment oriented, which means that the individual is only
obeying rules in order to not be punished. Stage two, individualism and exchange, is
when a person acknowledges that there are different viewpoints from different people.
Level two has stages three and four and is categorized as Conventional
Morality (Kohlberg). Stage three, Good Interpersonal Relationships, means that the
person only obeys rules to appear to be a good person to others. Stage four,
Maintaining the Social Order, is when a child and or individual is aware of the rules of
society and obeys them to escape a feeling of guilt.
Finally level three, Postconventional Morality has the last two stages: Social
Contract and Individual rights, and Universal Principles (Kohlberg). Stage 5 is when
a person recognizes that though rules exist for the greater good sometimes they arent
in our best interest and shouldnt be obeyed. In contrast people who are in stage 6 of
their moral development have made their own general rules for whether they conform to
society's rules or not.
We go through these stages of moral development because of the way we are
brought up. Most people, when they are younger, have parents who reward them for
obeying the rules or punish them when they disobey; that puts us in the first stage and
from there we proceed.
Morality, is a set of principles regarding the difference between ones
interpretation of right and wrong (Bernard). Kohlberg says that a person goes from the
first level of Conventional morality, to the second, when a person starts learning the

Carey 3

moral standards of valued role models then they begin to follow them
(Mc Leod). From the second level to the third, you start having individual judgement and
according to Kohlberg youve reached the final level.
Obedience also depends on a person's role and their environment. The Stanford
Prison Experiment showed that people will correspond to roles they are put in
depending on their environment which makes it easier for us to obey the rules given.
To conduct this study, Philip Zimbardo made a mock prison and hired college
students without any medical disabilities, psychological problems, or history of crime or
drug abuse (McLeod). Within hours of beginning the experiment the participants were
already playing their roles and taking advantage of their authority. Guards were
deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on the prisoners; they were taunting them and
brutally abusing them.
Deindividuation may also help to explain the behaviour of the participants;
especially the guards. This is a state when you become so immersed in the
norms of the group that you lose your sense of identity and personal
responsibility. The guards may have been so sadistic because they did not feel
what happened was down to them personally it was a group norm. The also
may have lost their sense of personal identity because of the uniform they wore
(Zimbardo).
Within one day, everyone was playing their role. The prisoners were acquiescent and
acted as protg while the guards became more mocking, hostile, and confident.
Zimbardo concluded from this experiment that

Carey 4

Also, learned helplessness could explain the prisoners submission to the


guards.The prisoners learnt that whatever they did had little effect on what
happened to them. In the mock prison the unpredictable decisions of the guards
led the prisoners to give up responding (Zimbardo).
This experiment concluded that people will uphold to the roles that they are supposed to
play especially when the roles are heavily stereotyped because of deindividuation.
Obedience is also derived from following rules given by an authority figure . One
of the most famous studies on obedience is The Milgram Experiment (Shuler).
Psychologist, Stanley Milgram carried out this experiment to answer the question Could
it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were all just following
orders? Could we call them accomplices? Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi, one of
the major organizers of the Holocaust (Holocaust Memorial Museum). Milgram would
answer this question by seeing how long a participant would let an experiment go on if it
required hurting another person.
The way they established this was by having two participants draw from papers
to see who would be the student and who would be the teacher(McLeod). The draw
was set so that the actual participant would always be the teacher. The role of the
teacher was to ask a series of questions to the student, and any time the student
answered wrong they would click a button that then would electrocute the student.
The rooms were set up so that the teacher had the machine of volts in front of
him in a room with the experimenter, and the student was in the room next door. After
a couple of questions, a recording of the student begging for the experiment to be

Carey 5

stopped because of the immense amount of pain they were in, would play to make the
teacher believe they were hurting the student. The majority of the teachers refused to
continue because the other person was in pain, but the experimenter simply said that it
was required for them to go on. After the experimenter said this, sixty-five percent of the
contributors continued to the highest level of volts (450) and all the rest continued to
300. According to Kyle Hill, electric currents from anywhere around 50-150 can cause a
person's breathing to stop, will be an extremely painful shock, or serious muscle
contractions, sometimes even death (Hill).
This study shows that people are more likely to obey orders from an authority
figure, even if it means killing someone.
Although much of these experiments were conducted years ago, people still tend
to follow under the rule of people who really should not be authorized to lead others.
Two examples are Donald Trump and ISIS. In Syria, between 20,000 and 31,500
people have joined under the rule of ISIS (CNN). ISIS has gone to villages and cities
killing innocent people(CNN). Donald Trumps popularity in the United States
presidential election is growing gradually, and in the republican side he is the
frontrunner (RealClearPolitics). He is completely unfit to be our president. One
example, could be how he said I will build a great, great wall on our southern border,
and I will have Mexico pay for that wall, ... Mark my words (Iman). This would be a
terrible idea because today we are living in an internationally connected world where
other countries are vital to our lives. Building that wall would alienate us and put the
world against us. Another reason Donald Trump is unfit to become our leader is

Carey 6

because of recent statements that show how un-knowledgeable he is( Harrison). Trump
said he would arrest and deport 11 million illegal immigrants, and would forbid all
Muslims from coming into the country (Bigelow).
Unless we recognize what we have done in the past, all of the mistakes that we
have made in giving the wrong people power to lead us, we wont be a step closer to
solving the problems our society faces. We must recognize that ideas given by
someone with power are not always ethical, and just because people have authority
doesn't they mean they have earned it. Many people do not attain the last stages of
moral development, but if those who do reach it don't do anything to stop cruel people
from leading us, we will not get anywhere. People need to speak up to make others
realize that just because someone has been given power to lead, each person has the
option to follow, or to stand up and make change. For example, when Martin Luther
King stepped up for African Americans and started the Civil Rights Movement (The King
Center), and more recently the LGBT community got the Supreme Court to rule that
states cannot ban same-sex marriage (American Civil Liberties Union).
Unfortunately, people who are easily influenced will also let themselves be led by
leaders with authority regardless of their own individual ideas.
So I wonder if there is really a way to prevent this from happening in the future?

Carey 7

Works Cited
Bigelow, William. "Shock: L.A. Times Says Trump 'Not Fit to Be President' - Breitbart."
Breitbart News. N.p., 03 Mar. 2016. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
Constable, Scott, Zachary Schuler, Lucretia Klaber, & Mick Rakauskas. "Conformity,
Compliance, and Obedience." Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience. N.p., Mar.-Apr.
2015. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
Gert, Bernard. "The Definition of Morality." Stanford University. Stanford University, 17
Apr. 2002. Web. 19 May 2016.
Hill, Kyle. "How Much Electricity Can You Take on before You Die?" Science Based
Life. N.p., 2 Feb. 2012. Web.
"LGBT Rights." American Civil Liberties Union. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
McLeod, Saul. "Milgram Experiment | Simply Psychology." Milgram Experiment. N.p.,
2007. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
McLeod, Saul. "Stanford Prison Experiment | Simply Psychology." Stanford Prison
Experiment | Simply Psychology. N.p., 2008. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.
McIntyre, John, and Tom Bevan. "Election 2016 General Election: Trump vs. Clinton."
Museum, Holocaust Memorial. "Adolf Eichmann." United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 29 Jan. 2016. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.
RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Trump vs. Clinton. N.p., n.d. Web.
10 Mar. 2016.

Carey 8

"Supreme Court Rules States Must Allow Same-sex Marriage." CNN. Cable News
Network, n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.
Zekri, Iman. "Trump Stumped." Eagle News Florida Gulf Coast University. Iman Zekri,
22 Dec. 2015. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.
Zimbardo, Philip G. "2. Setting Up." Stanford Prison Experiment. N.p., n.d. Web. 17
Feb. 2016.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen