How likely are we to blindly obey authority?
Most of you know the story behind one of the most controversial experiments in social psychology — Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience to authority. Driven to understand the crimes and atrocities done in World War II, he came to the conclusion that evil happens when people blindly obey orders and stop thinking for themselves. In this research, obedience is explained in the context of cooperation, as something a person willingly accepts. As cooperation is an integral part of every healthy work environment that relies on teamwork, we were curious to explore the effects of obedience on workplace and business results.
The question we asked ourselves was — how likely are we to blindly obey authority? And what are the factors that influence obedience? Before we go further with answering these questions, it might be important to stop for a moment and think a little bit about the term authority.
What is authority?
To be honest, we are not sure. Very often we hear this word in different contexts — organizations, politics, parenthood, school system, everyday life. But when we ask ourselves what the meaning of this word is, we can’t give a precise definition. So, when we take a look at this word, we see a lot of different things. And that is our biggest challenge — we ask for authority, but we are not sure what authority is!
As one of the most complex principles that we know, authority is very inexplicit. Derived from the Latin auctoritas and has various meanings and a variety of forms, depending on the criteria we choose. One of the most common definitions of authority in business is connected to formal vs informal authority.
In an organisational sense, we very often put the equation mark between authority and power — power to make decisions, power to do something that others can’t do, power to be in touch with important information, power to influence processes and structures, roles and strategies. And this model of behavior can be connected with someone’s role or hierarchy level e.g. MANAGERS.
In order to present this relation between authority and power, let’s imagine that we have two managers with the same background, same education, same experience, same age. We are aware that usually, some of the managers are not equally accepted among employees — or we can say that employees are not obedient and don’t follow their leaders in the same way. Although these managers have the same roles and duties, something is different. Certain managers are considered more preferable than others.
So, the question here is — if we have two managers, both in authority and both holding the same power, why do we have different opinions and emotions regarding them? And the answer can be informal authority. This is something we don’t usually pay attention to, but it can strongly influence our relations, our “power” and our capability to make an impact in many different fields.
We see informal authority as a capacity to influence others using skills, personality traits, and other forms of informal power. When discussing informal authority, we can often hear the phrase personal power. And it raises another question- personal power or personal powers? We would say — powers. And the truth is that we all have more than one. We have different powers that we use when needed. However, practice has shown that people are not always aware of their influence and powers. If one of our managers had awareness about their authority (both formal and informal powers), maybe they could do something in another way.
In Milgram’s experiment, we have a form of authority that is more formal than informal. The crucial power in this context was the power of experts. And in practice, we can see how people put the equation mark between the position power and expert power. Can you recognize this in your working environment?
So, how do we “decide” whether we are going to be obedient or not when facing authorities? What are the important criteria for us so we can blindly follow authority without critical questioning? Let’s take a look at what Milgram has found.
Obedience and agentic state
In short, in Milgram’s experiment, the participants were presented with a conflict between the moral implications of the task they had (administered shocks as punishment and hurting another person), and obeying authority (listening to the orders given by the Experimenter if they would start to hesitate or refuse the task). Obedience was measured through the number of participants who went to the maximum intensity of shocks of 450 V.
The initial results were very surprising and shocking. Around 65% of participants went all the way to the maximum, up to 450 V, and all participants administered shocks of at least 300 V. So, it appears that people tend to obey those they perceive as authority without questioning their orders.
Now, this raises another question — what is happening with our critical perspective when we are in contact with people we perceive as authority?
Milgram explained that, in order to create social hierarchies, humans need to be capable of giving up control to another person or idea. When a person enters a group with a certain hierarchy, such as an organization, they experience a shift in mindset from an autonomous individual to an agent. When in this agentic state, you no longer feel responsible for your actions. Instead, you shift the responsibility to the person above you, willingly giving them control, and becoming responsible only for carrying out the orders of those you perceive as authority.
Somehow when giving responsibility, we are giving up critical thinking and we become unaware of what it is we are doing. By giving responsibility to the authority, we give permission to someone else to make decisions for us — we are giving power to „them“ leaving ourselves with a sense of helplessness. In this way, we are creating a context in which we don’t have the right to decide for ourselves, to choose, to belong since we are losing ourselves in our relationship with the authority.
As a result, there is no more just “me”, the focus is on “us”, and I am no longer important since someone else knows better what I should do. The consequence of this behavior can lead us to feel very lonely and helpless because we don’t have the power or are not responsible for. Since we can start using this pattern of behavior and beliefs in all fields of our lives, we are now behaving the same way with parents, kids, mentors, friends, even with casual passers-by. Such behavior, as you can imagine, can be very dangerous!
This situation is usual for environments where obedience is valued and rewarded, and we are punished for disobedience. Just think, how often do you hear the words: “You will do it because I said so!”? Very often, we would say.
Still, based on our real-life experience, it’s clear that obedience isn’t always this extreme. Some people are more susceptible to obedience than others. Situations we encounter are rarely as simple as the one in the experiment. We function in a group, notice how others are reacting, experience group pressure or get inspired by the acts of others. Sometimes, we look at our leaders and don’t see them as legitimate authority figures, making it easier to question their orders.
So, what are the factors that can influence obedience?
Milgram concluded that obedience varied significantly depending on the context. The lowest obedience of 10% was noticed when participants saw others disobeying the experimenter and questioning his authority. Also, obedience dropped when the symbols of authority weren’t present (such as the lab coat of the experimenter) and when the authority figure wasn’t close by but giving orders by phone. Another thing that had a lot of influence on lower obedience level was having direct contact with the person getting shocked, making participants get their hands more dirty in the process. On the other hand, the highest obedience of 92% was noticed when participants could delegate their task to another person, that way taking less responsibility.
We can see here that obedience is dependent on our understanding of authority and persuasive techniques authority figures use, conformity to the group and social support, and role models — seeing an example of disobedience, or shared responsibility with others (this is called the diffusion of responsibility).
Also, what we consider as important factors are some things that are not addressed in this experiment, but which certainly can be connected to this phenomenon. Some of them are trust (here we can mark 2 parts — do I trust the authority and do I trust myself), value system, personality traits, social skills, the level of emotional intelligence, parenting style we were exposed to during childhood, etc.
How can we prevent these situations from happening?
Some actions could be connected with understanding what authority means for each of us. Also, we can ask ourselves why we find it important to follow our authorities, what are the benefits of it and who our authorities are.
The next step is developing our critical thinking and understanding influence. One of interventions that can really contribute to this field is leading by example — in other words, demonstrating behaviors we want to see in our environment.
Maybe it’s also important to underline that authority is something that can but doesn’t have to be connected with position and hierarchy, and it is something that we can notice (if we pay attention) in everyday life.
Building our authority (read — „building our formal and informal powers“) helps us spread awareness about our thoughts, behaviors, beliefs and emotions, and, in a certain way, it increases our circle of influence. Authority is something changeable and it is connected with the perception of our power and power of others.
Blind obedience to authority is a trap that we can easily fall into, and it can decrease creativity and productivity on an individual and all other levels — team, company, etc. Taking a look at leadership roles, it’s important to create the right culture and develop skills that are going to help prevent the negative effects of authority.
We see it as a culture in which employees are empowered to use critical thinking, share their honest opinion, understand different perspectives, are agile and focused on improvements, take ownership and responsibility for their actions. So, be careful who you are choosing as a model of authority and be aware of the way you are contributing to this process of obeying or disobeying authority.
