Question

Think of a time when you resisted conformity or obedience. What were the reasons behind resisting conformity or obedience? If you were a participant in Milgram’s study, would you have obeyed the experimenter? Why or why not? Remember, your posts must be a minimum of 150 words

Answer 1

It happens sometimes that you don’t feel like to obey the authority or confirm with the crowd.

Some of the reasons behind resisting conformity can be:

1. When the numbers of group members are reduced to one or two then there is no need to confirm as when the group size is big.

2 It also depends on the nature of task, when the task is simple and easy with obvious answer, we stick to our responses but as soon as the task gets difficult the need to confirm also increases.

3. It can be possible that sometimes we wish to maintain our individuality; we may want to be different from other people.

4. Some people like to feel they have control over the things that happen to them in their lives, and if pressured to conform they may feel their control has been threatened.

5. Sometimes people are swept along by the social pressure placed on them, but given time to think they will perhaps resist that pressure.

Reasons to resist obedience can be:

1. Feeling responsible for your actions and empathetic towards others drops the obedience levels.

2. Some people have the habit of questioning motives and status of authority

3. Reactance is the psychological process of doing the opposite to what is being asked. It often results from overly harsh attempts to restrict a person’s freedom so that eventually the person reacts in a negative way

If I imagine myself to be in Milgram’s experiment I would probably first have obeyed to the authority and have given some shocks to the learner’s but when the level of shock would have increased I would probably have disobeyed the authority because of the sense of humanity and empathy for other people.