Transcript Obedience

Obedience and Authority
ORDER
 “sociologists talk of social system which means that
the coordination and integration of social structure
which ends in order rather than in chaos.”
 “The means by which individuals or groups are
induced and/or compelled to confirm to certain
norms and values are numerous.”
(sociologyguide.com)
Obedience
describes the act of carrying-out commands under threat
 obedience to laws (go to jail)
 obedience to social norms (ostracized)
 obedience to a monarch, government, organization,
religion, or church (excommunication)
 obedience to God (fear of judgment)
 obedience to management in the workplace (fired)
Conformity (not same)
describes behavior intended to match that of the majority
 Conform to style (dictated by fashion industry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LVptO7o4L8
 Conform to peers (group think) Mean girls
 Conform to media images - Televisual or “Cultural
reproduction (Johnson, 2006)
 Conform to social expectations (marriage)
 Conform to gender roles (girls don’t do wires)
 Conform to group mores (Easy A)
WW II & beyond
• Nazi guards routinely committed atrocities in concentration
camps.
• When tried, all claimed they were simply following orders.”
(Obedience)
• Jews were extremely compliant (conformity) making it
relatively easy for the Nazis.
• Replicated in Ireland (British), Viet Nam (by Americans),
Lebanon (Israelis)
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Turkey (Armenians) MORE?
Sociology of studies of Obedience
• Milgram experiments, (1961) were the earliest investigations
of the power of authority figures as well as the lengths to
which participants would go as a result of their influence.
• Results showed that a majority of civilian volunteers would
obey orders to apply electric shocks to another person until
they were (supposedly) unconscious or dead.
Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
• Willingness of people to obey orders and adopt abusive roles in a situation
where they were placed in the position of being dominant by a higher
authority.
• Volunteers were divided into two groups and placed in a "prison," with one
group in the position of playing "prison guards," and other group in the
position of "prisoners."
• Experimenters acted as authority figures at the start of the experiment, but
then delegated responsibility to the "guards," who enthusiastically followed
instructions
• “Guards” assumed the roles of abusive authority figures, going far beyond the
experimenters' original instruction and brutalizing the "prisoners."
• Prisoners adopted a submissive role with regard to their tormentors, even
though they knew that they were in an experiment.
• The Stanford experiment demonstrated not only obedience (of the "guards"
to the experimenters, and the "prisoners" to both the guards and
experimenters), but also high levels of conformity (Prisoners).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jYx8nwjFQ
Obedience does not always lead to
atrocities
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Traffic signals reduce deaths
Laws protect the weak/poor
Religion creates sense of purpose
Lack of rules leads to Anomy
Obedience can lead to internal order
Institutions lead to self-discipline (internal police):
 Deferral of rewards
 Priority of community over individual
 Goal oriented individuals
 Alterism: principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion
to the welfare of others (opposed to egoism).
 In over-populated areas, need for obedience is important but can
lead to repression
Dogmatism
1. pertaining to, or of the nature of a dogma (system of principles or
tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, etc.)
2. asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner;
opinionated.
Example - Varna marriage system
 Varna system n marriage system : nature, including humans, are grouped, by
origin, into groups: gunas, Satva, Rajas & Tamas.
 They come by birth: a man gets birth in a particular genetic lineage (family) on
the basis of his previous karmas ( thoughts and actions).
 A woman should always marry a man superior to her. Otherwise she will not
respect him, and good progeny will not be born.
There are 3 types of marriages:
1. Savarna Anulom: Boy/girl of the same varna. This is essential. To maintain the
original biological-genetic strain of the family.
2. Asvarana Anulom: Boy of a higher varna with girl of a lower varna. This intervarna marriage is the best. As it begets highly developed individuals. This is
essential for the growth of society. This cross-breeding is very crucial.
3. Pratilom: Boy of a lower varna - girl of a higher varna: This is banned. As it is an
outrage to mate less developed sperm with more evolved ovum. Children of such
wedlocks may be intelligent but they will be, by nature biological makeup,
destructive for the society, life and growth.
Source: Parivar, Sangh. “Science of Caste/Varna system- Marriage Laws” Accessed October 16, 2011
http://www.sanghparivar.org/blog/swastika/science-of-caste-varna-system-marriage-laws.
Conform to others’ expectations
Style (FASIONISTAS)
Groups social norms
(give examples at St T – NOT obedience)
Gender norms (give examples from your life)
Televisual (social reproduction)
Televisual
 We see media representations(clothing, values, lifestyle), buy into
them, replicating what we see
 Men get to do all the ‘fun stuff,’ supporting Johnson’s theories of
cultural reproduction.
 Women represented in media are trivialized and attempts to gain
status often lead to heartbreak and burnout (Gills, 2007).
Examples?
 Most of the women featured in the media are prettier, younger
than the general population, more likely to be identified by their
marital status (Lauzen, 2005).
“media portrayals that underrepresented and/or misrepresent
females in positions of power and leadership may have real-life
consequences for girls and women. Studies of media use and sexrole socialization reveal that televisual portrays influence children's
notions of appropriate occupational expectations and choices
(Lauzen & Dozier, 2004).
Propaganda
What is Propaganda?
Biased information
Simplifies complex
issues or ideas
Created to shape
public opinion and
behavior
True, partially true, or
blatantly false information
Plays on emotions
Symbols, images,
words, or music
Directs human
action toward a
given goal
Advertises a cause,
organization, or
movement and its
opponents
Common Propaganda Techniques
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Bandwagon
Testimonial
Plain Folks
Transfer
Fear/Card Stacking
Logical Fallacies
Glittering Generalities
 Name-calling
Bandwagon
 An appeal to the subject to follow the crowd
 Tries to convince the subject that one side is the winning
side and that winning is inevitable
 Appeals to a person’s desire to be on the winning side
Testimonial
 Quotations or endorsements which attempt to connect a well-known or
respectable person with a product or ideal with the intent to better “sell”
the product or ideal
Plain Folks
 An attempt to convince the public that his or her views reflect those of
the “common person”
 The candidate tries to appear to be working for the benefit of the
“common person”
Transfer
 Used to transfer feelings (positive or negative) from one
object to another
 In politics, this technique is often used to transfer blame
or bad feelings from one politician to another
or from one group of people to another
Fear/Card Stacking
 Only presents information that is positive to an idea or
proposal and omits information contrary to it
 While the information presented is
true, other
important information is
purposely omitted
Logical Fallacies
 An argument that sounds as if it makes sense but the premises given
for the conclusion do not provide proper support for the argument
 Slippery slope - ”If we let gay people get married, next there will
be men marrying horses!”
 Generalization - ”Enron was a large, corrupt company, therefore all
large companies are corrupt.”
Glittering Generalities
 Uses words that have different positive meaning for
individual subjects, but are linked to highly valued
concepts
 Words often used as glittering generalities are honor,
glory, love of country, and freedom
Name-calling
 Uses derogatory language or words that carry a negative
connotation when describing an enemy
 Attempts to arouse prejudice among the public by labeling the
target something that the public dislikes
Common Propaganda Traits
• Uses truths, half-truths, or lies
• Omits information selectively
• Simplifies complex issues or ideas
• Plays on emotions
• Advertises a cause
• Attacks opponents
• Targets desired audiences
NAZI Propaganda (they wrote the book)
“National Community”
 A cornerstone of Nazi ideology and
propaganda
 An organic, racial union
of all “Aryan” Germans
 Political strife and dissension have
no place in National Socialist society
 Contributing to the general welfare of the
nation, not individualism
 Nazi propaganda played a crucial role in selling
the myth to Germans who longed for unity,
national pride and greatness
Making a
leader
 Nazi propaganda idolized Hitler as a gifted statesman
who brought stability, created jobs, and restored
German greatness
 Under the Nazi regime, Germans were expected to
pay public allegiance to the “Führer” in quasireligious forms, such as giving the Nazi salute and
greeting others on the street with “Heil Hitler!,” the
so-called “German Greeting”
Modern techniques of propaganda -- including strong
images and simple messages -- helped propel Austrianborn Adolf Hitler from being a little known extremist
to a leading candidate in the 1932 German presidential
elections. The style of this poster is similar to some of
film stars of the era. Election poster, 1932; photo by
Heinrich Hoffmann
 Faith in Hitler strengthened the bonds of national
unity, while non-compliance signaled dissension in a
society where open criticism of the regime, and its
leaders, were grounds for imprisonment
 One crucial factor in creating a cohesive group is to
define who is excluded from membership
Defining the
Enemy
Nazi propaganda often portrayed Jews as engaged in
a conspiracy to provoke war. Here, a stereotyped
Jew conspires behind the scenes to control the
Allied powers, represented by the British,
American, and Soviet flags. The caption reads,
"Behind the enemy powers: the Jew." Circa 1942.
 Nazi propagandists contributed to the regime's policies
by publicly identifying groups for exclusion, inciting
hatred or cultivating indifference, and justifying their
pariah status to the populace
 Propaganda helped to define who would be excluded
from the new society and justified measures against the
“outsiders”:
 Jews
 Sinti and Roma (Gypsies)
 homosexuals
 political dissidents
 Germans viewed as genetically inferior and harmful
to “national health”
Deceiving the
Public
 Propaganda served as an important tool to
win over the majority of the German public
who had not supported Adolf Hitler and to
push forward the Nazis' radical program
 A new state propaganda apparatus, headed
by Joseph Goebbels, sought to manipulate
and deceive the German population and the
outside world
 Propagandists preached an appealing
message of national unity and a utopian
future
An antisemitic poster published in Poland in March
1941. The caption reads, "Jews are lice; They cause
typhus." This German-published poster was intended to
instill fear of Jews among Christian Poles.
Indoctrinating
Youth
 From the 1920s onwards, the Nazi Party
targeted German youth as a special audience
for its propaganda messages
 These messages emphasized that the Party
was a movement of youth:
 dynamic
 resilient
 forward-looking
 hopeful
"Students/Be the Führer's propagandists."
With militant appeals to nationalism,
freedom, and self-sacrifice, the Nazi Party
successfully recruited students disenchanted
with German democracy and their current
student organizations.
 Millions of German young people were won
over to Nazism in the classroom and through
extracurricular activities
Writing the
News
 Der Stürmer was the most notorious, antisemitic
newspaper in Germany
 The newspaper, headed by Julius Streicher, published
lurid tales of Jewish “ritual murder,” sex crimes, and
financial malfeasance
 The Nazis understood the power and attraction of
emerging technologies, such as film, loudspeakers,
radio, and television, in the service of propaganda
"All of Germany Listens to the Führer with the
People's Radio." The poster depicts a crowd
surrounding a radio. The radio looms large,
symbolizing the mass appeal and broad audience
for Nazi broadcasts.
 These technologies offered the Nazi leadership a means
for mass dissemination of their ideological messages and
a vehicle for reinforcing the myth of the National
Community through communal listening and viewing
experiences
Starts young so you don’t even question “the truth”
“Women like dressing in
skimpy clothing for men”
• So ingrained we don’t even
see it (Hegemony)
• Hegemony: the social, cultural,
ideological, or economic
influence exerted by a
dominant group
• Males run the industry so they
decide the way things are
“Digital Divide”
• Digital divide is the one between
men and women (Reid-Walsh
and Mitchell, 2004), particularly
in relation to media production
• U.S. girls compromise 50
percent of students in high
school computer classes but
account for only17 percent of
the computer science advanced
placement test-takers (Kearney,
2006)
Women’s portrayal
• “We studied the top 100 movies
released from 1990 to 2005. Of
characters shown, only 17% were
female. And of the few female
characters that were in these movies,
most of them were highly stereotyped
During this fifteen-year period, there
was zero improvement, as far as the
percentage of female characters. What
message is our culture still sending to
kids?”
Geena Davis, Speaking at the National
Conference for Media Reform, 2007
Normative Reflexivity
• We live and learn our behaviour through
the media (Johansson, 2007) and find
gender relations and expectations through
media. (we believe what we see on TV to
be true)
• These behaviours are imitated by the
media consuming population, and then fed
back through the media to society, creating
culture, validating the media’s initial claims
that these images represent society
(Collective consciousness)
Asch’s conformity studies
• How much will people go along
with the group EVEN when they
know the group is wrong?
• In this experiment, a participant
and a group of accomplices were
given two cards
• On one card was a line, on the
other a set of three lines
• People in the group were asked
to state which of the three lines
was most similar to the single
line.
Example
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In the first rounds, the accomplices in the
group would give the correct answer
Later on, the accomplices would give the
wrong answer
Would the participant go along with the
group, or not?
66% would go along
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Conformity to wrong answers at least
once by 2/3 of the participants
If only one of the accomplices said the
correct answer, the participants would
never conform to the wrong answer
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t
How does this apply
to Media influence?
Studies of helping
behavior
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In what social situations are people
likely to offer help to others?
– When they believe they are the only
person who knows of the problem, they
are more likely to help
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People are less likely to offer help when:
– They are unsure of the situation and whether
the need for help is legitimate
– If they are unsure of what will happen to
them if they help
– They think that other people are likely to help
if they do not. Also known as the “free rider”
problem
Symbolic Interactionism
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George Herbert Mead
Describes and explains people’s social
behavior in terms of the meanings
these behaviors have for the people
involved.
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Symbolic interactionists look for the hidden
meanings and subtexts behind people’s words
and actions
A person’s self identity is very important to
understanding the meanings
Gossip as subtext
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People gossip in part because
that way they can find out
information about other people’s
trustworthiness
i.e. If you gossip with someone
about someone else, they now
know you are going to gossip
about them (Subtext – “you can’t
be trusted”)
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Men who see themselves as “real”
men may only do things that they see
are consistent with this self image –
such as drinking beer or whiskey in a
bar, rather than some other drink
Others?
Culture determines symbols and
meanings
Examples?
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In addition, the way people want
others to see them also helps us
understand their words and actions
This is “impression management.”
– E.g. dressing in a suit for a job interview
conveys the impression of a serious job
candidate
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A woman will dress in a suit for a job interview –
conveys the impression of a serious job candidate
In a fashionable outfit to go out with friendsconveys the impression of a fun, hip person
Exchange processes
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Exchange theory is a sociological theory that
considers much social behavior as based on
exchanges of valued things (e.g. things, time,
friendship), between people
“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”
Homans and Coleman
The power dependence
principle
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The person who is least dependent on the other person
has the most power in an exchange
E.g. A and B and C exchange with each other as
follows:

A B C
A and C can only exchange with B, B can trade with
both A and C.
B is least dependent, so B has more power than A and C
in the exchange.
Example?
Import - Exporter
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Has connections in another country
Can bring items into Canada few can
A (seller in other country)
C (Canadian buyer who wants goods)
B has more power
Social setting
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A (player) wants to meet C (hottie)
B (friends to both)
C (hottie) is bored and want to meet
someone new
B has more power (in this situation)
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Desired dependence
We start life as dependents, initially as
helpless babies and later as children,
learning so we can free ourselves from our
mother's apron strings. That comfortable
existence continues to call us and many of
us spend our lives trying to recreate those
feelings of dependent safety.
A symptom of this is the way that groups
of people will almost always end up with
one leader and many happily-dependent
followers (Big Brother)
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In exchange relations, trust in the person
with whom you are exchanging is vital
When trust is broken, exchange breaks
down
Because of the need for trust, a person’s
reputation (as a trustworthy person) is vital
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Detecting cheaters was important for
the survival of our ancestors, logic
problems were not.
Status Processes
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People form hierarchies in small
groups very quickly – usually
within 10 minutes
Once the hierarchy is
established it is difficult to
change
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Who gets to be at the top of the hierarchy?
Sociologists have found that certain general
characteristics help determine who gets to be
at the top – gender, age, race, ethnicity and
education
They call these things diffuse status
characteristics
Name some for guys – for girls?
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If people have specific skills relevant to the
situation, then these people will often be put
at the top of the hierarchy
Sociologists call these characteristics
specific status characteristics.
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Sociologists have found that for any person, his
or her status characteristics basically add up to
determine their total status in the group.
Bibliography
 Concern Infotech Pvt. “Conformity”. 2011. (accessed October 10 , 2011). sociologyguide.com.
 Johnson, M. “Introduction” in Fox, M., Johnson, D. & Rosser, S. (2006). Women, Gender and Technology, Ill:
University of Illinois Press.
 Lauzen, M., Dozier, D. (2005). “Recognition and respect revisited: Portrayals of age and gender in prime time
television.” Mass Communication & Society. 8(3). January 16, 2007.

 Leinonen, T. (Critical) history of ICT in education - and where we are heading?
Thursday 23 June, 2006. (accessed October 10 , 2011) http://flosse.dicole.org/?blog=flosseposse
 Lister, et al. (2003). New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York.
 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.). (1993).Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster.
 Parivar, Sangh. “Science of Caste/Varna system- Marriage Laws” (Accessed October 16, 2011)
http://www.sanghparivar.org/blog/swastika/science-of-caste-varna-system-marriage-laws.
 “Sociology of obedience” (10 October, 2011). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 14, 2011, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_obedience