Obedience
Obedience is compliance with instructions, rules, or authority. It can arise from choice, habit, social pressure, or coercion.
Milgram experiment: A series of 1960s experiments in which participants were instructed to deliver apparent electric shocks to another person. It tested how far ordinary participants would follow an experimenter's commands.
Authority: The recognized right or capacity to direct others and make decisions. Obedience specifically concerns compliance with directives issued by an authority.
Military discipline: Training and practices that maintain order, coordination, and adherence to lawful commands in armed forces. Military organizations rely on disciplined obedience while placing limits on unlawful orders.
Groupthink: A mode of group decision-making in which the desire for consensus suppresses critical evaluation. Deference to leaders can silence disagreement and weaken a group's judgment.
Stanford prison experiment: A 1971 study in which participants assigned guard and prisoner roles took part in a simulated prison. Its claims about roles and authority are often compared with obedience research.
Compliance: Behavior that conforms to a request, rule, or standard, whether or not the person privately agrees. Obedience is one form of compliance, usually linked to a command or authority.
Bureaucracy: An organizational system governed by offices, formal rules, and hierarchical responsibilities. Formal procedures make obedience routine and distribute responsibility across offices.
Moral disengagement: Cognitive processes that allow people to justify harmful conduct without feeling personal moral responsibility. People may recast obedience as duty to excuse actions they would otherwise condemn.
Agentic state: A proposed psychological state in which people see themselves as carrying out another person's wishes rather than acting autonomously. Milgram used this idea to explain why participants attributed responsibility to the experimenter.
Social influence: The ways people change their thoughts, feelings, or behavior in response to others. Obedience is a form of social influence centered on directives and authority.