The Psychological Evidence Support The Claim That...

To what extent does the psychological evidence support the claim that individuals will blindly conform or obey commands from an authority figure, even when this involves inflicting harm on others? One definition of conformity given by the Oxford English dictionary is ‘behaviour in accordance with socially accepted convention’. Conformity is common among humans and within society, however much people like to think of themselves as individuals. It has even been seen that people will obey commands that hurt others in order to conform. This can be seen in several experiments conducted over the years with some producing surprising results. The controversial study of Milgram (1963) is a behavioural study of obedience and therefore a prime piece of evidence with results that support the claim that individuals will obey commands from an authority figure, even if this involves potentially inflicting harm upon others. Forty male participants were used within this study, all which were paid on their arrival. This was a varied sample as all participants varied in occupation, age and level of education however, as females were not used this could be considered to be participant bias. All participants believed they were assigned the role of teacher by random and were asked to administer electric shocks to another person who they believed to be a volunteer but who was, in fact, a confederate. No real shocks were administered but the participant believed them to be so. They were lead toShow MoreRelatedManagement Course: Mba−10 General Management215330 Words   |  862 Pagesmarketing channel distribution, and entirely new patterns of employee recruiting, development, and training. In addition, product and services launches increasingly require more effective development initiatives. Rapidly increasing numbers of new offerings—from Web-oriented modules to credit cards—are being commoditized in months or even weeks instead of the periods of years on which companies had counted for cash flow. Increasingly demanding consumer and industrial buyers are basing their purchasing decisions