Obedience (human behavior)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: A Child at Gunpoint (1943) from the Stroop Report
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Obedience, or submissive compliance, is the act of obeying orders from others. This differs from compliance, which is behavior influenced by peers. This is in turn different from conformity, which is behavior intended to match that of the majority.
Obedience is often associated with social dominance and submission.
Humans have been shown to be obedient in the presence of perceived legitimate authority figures, as shown by the Milgram experiment in the 1960s, which was carried out by Stanley Milgram to find out how the Nazis managed to get ordinary people to take part in the mass murders of the Holocaust. The experiment showed that obedience to authority was the norm, not the exception. Regarding obedience, Milgram said that "Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to; Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others."
See also
In humans:
- Authority
- Codependency
- Conformity
- Depersonalization
- Civil disobedience
- Dominance hierarchy
- Submissive
- Sycophancy
- Vow of obedience
In animals:
- Animal training
- Obedience training (for dogs)
- Horse breaking
