Real life Essay Example

Real life Essay Example Real life Essay Real life Essay A good current affair example of conformity could be the incidents which took place in Abu Ghraib which I discussed in detail within task 1.It is possible that not all the soldiers that got involved in these horrendous activities would of done this if they hadnt felt a group pressure to do so. Obedience: Obedience can be easily confused with conformity and sometimes the meaning can seem very similar but the main difference is that in obedience differently to conformity you are actually instructed to do something and what you personally think about it or is you disagree is irrelevant whereas in conformity you arent told to do anything you are choosing to behave in a way that will most probably comply with what you believe that the majority would rather you do.In obedience you are being told what to do by someone of a higher status than you. In conformity you feel the psychological need to be accepted by others. I would personally define obedience as the action of following the instructions received by a superior, regardless of your personal feelings towards this. Being ordered or instructed to behave in a specific way: Obedience involves a person in authority telling you to do something or to behave n a specific way.You may not want to do this but as you are in a lower rank to the person ordering you have to carry these activities out regardless of your personal views. An example may be for example within the RAF a person in a higher rank may say to you Get rid of those side burns and although you may not want to you will do this. This shows that you are moulding your behaviour to what you are told to, regardless of what you personally want.Ordered by someone in higher authority: If somebody that was in the same social level s you and had the same authority as you, ordered you to do something you didnt want to do, you w ould be much less likely to carry this request out. In obedience it is important that the person giving the order has authority over the person being ordered.Involves social power and status: You are more likely to obey somebodys commands if you believe them to have more social power and status than you. You will see them as higher class people and will want to be respectful and follow their orders. A great example of this is that within Milgrams study it was found that people were more likely to obey if the person in charge was looked more professional or more important, in this case it was if they wore a white coat (doctors) this gave them a sense of importance and power. I will now write about two social studies carried out to investigate how people obey to authority and what affects this. Firstly I will explain an experiment carried out by Milgram.He placed a newspaper advertisement offering $4.50 for an hours work, in response to this an individual turns up to take part in a Ps ychology experiment investigating memory and learning. He is introduced to a stern looking experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasant and friendly co-subject. The experimenter explains that the experiment will look into the role of punishment in learning, and that one will be the teacher and one will be the learner. Lots are drawn to determine roles, and it is decided that the individual who answered the ad will become the teacher. (The drawing of lots was rigged, so that the actor would always end up as the learner.)Your co-subject is taken to a room where he is strapped in a chair to prevent movement and an electrode is placed on his arm. Next, the teacher is taken to an adjoining room which contains a generator. The teacher is instructed to read a list of two word pairs and ask the learner to read them back. If the learner gets the answer correct, then they move on to the next word. If the answer is incorrect, the teacher is supposed to shock the learner starting at 15 vo lts.The generator has 30 switches in 15 volt augmentations; each is labelled with a voltage ranging from 15 up to 450 volts. Each switch also has a rating, ranging from slight shock to danger: severe shock. The final two switches are labelled XXX. The teacher automatically is supposed to increase the shock each time the learner misses a word in the list. Although the teacher thought that he/she was administering shocks to the learner, the learner is actually a student or an actor who is never actually harmed.It was found that at times, the worried teachers questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept the response and continue shocking, even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so.The theory that only the most ghastly monsters on the merciless fringe of society would s ubmit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings show that, two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of obedient subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes (Obedience to Authority). Ultimately 65% of all of the teachers punished the learners to the maximum 450 volts. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts.Here I have included an image of how the experiment was laid out: Milgram also conducted several follow-up experiments to determine what might change the likelihood of maximum shock delivery. In one condition, the touch-proximity condition, the teacher was required to hold the hand of the learner on a shock plate in order to give him shocks above 150 volts. The most interesting finding from this follow-up experiment is that 32% of the subjects in the proximity-touch condition held the hand of the learner on the shock plate while administering shocks in excess of 400 volts. Further experimen ts showed that teachers were less obedient when the experimenter communicated with them via the telephone versus in person, and males were just as likely to be obedient as females, although females tended to be more nervous.There was another main study carried out to analyze obedience in a real life scenario, this was done in a hospital with nurses. It was conducted in the following way the study was set in a psychiatric hospital in the America. The participants were 22 nurses on night duty. An unknown doctor, who was a confederate, telephoned the hospital and spoke to a nurse. He instructed them to give medication to a patient. The medication was a drug with a maximum dosage of 10Mg (which was shown on the label of the bottle).The doctor instructed the nurse to give a dosage of 20Mg to the patient and said that he would sign the relevant authorisation papers when he arrived in the hospital in 10 minutes time. It was hospital rules to not take these kinds of orders on the telephone. This was done with each of the 22 nurses. The result was that 21/22 of the nurses obeyed the telephone instruction and began to prepare the medication before they were stopped and the situation was explained to them.