authority

Examples of authority in the following topics:

• Obedience

  • Obedience is a form of social influence that occurs when a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure.
  • It occurs when a person yields to explicit instructions or orders from an authority figure.
  • They quickly found that the majority of humans are surprisingly obedient to authority.
  • Proximity to the authority figure: Proximity indicates physical closeness; the closer the authority figure is, the more obedience is demonstrated.
  • The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments stand as dramatic demonstrations of the power of authority and other situational factors in human behavior.

• Ethical Guidelines for Human Research

  • The 1961 Milgram experiments examining obedience to authority figures was a notable series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
  • The experiments measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.
  • Participants were asked by the "authority figure" to act as "teachers" and teach "learners" a particular sequence.
  • The authority figure and learner were both in on the experiment, in which the teacher (the experiment subject) was told that the first time the learner made a mistake in the sequence, the teacher had to administer an electric shock to the learner.
  • The goal of the study was to see how far people would go, how high a shock they would deliver, if encouraged by the authority figure to do so.

• Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

  • Children accept and believe the rules of authority figures, such as parents and teachers.  
  • Children continue to accept the rules of authority figures, but this is now due to their belief that this is necessary to ensure positive relationships and societal order.
  • This often occurs in moral dilemmas involving drinking and driving or business situations where participants have been shown to reason at a lower developmental stage, typically using more self-interest driven reasoning (i.e., stage two) than authority and social order obedience driven reasoning (i.e., stage four).

• Social Psychology

  • After the war, researchers became interested in a variety of social problems including gender issues, racial prejudice, cognitive dissonance, bystander intervention, aggression, and obedience to authority.

• Moral Development in Childhood

  • A child accepts that a rule is a rule simply because someone in authority says so.

• Social Cognition

  • For example, if you meet your new teacher, your "teacher schema" may be activated, and you may therefore automatically associate this person with wisdom and authority if that is how you have experienced past teachers.

• Compliance

  • It is generally distinguished from obedience (behavior influenced by authority figures) and conformity (behavior intended to match that of a social majority).

• Bandura and Observational Learning

  • While this type of learning can take place at any stage in life, it is thought to be particularly important during childhood, when authority is important.

• Cognitive Development in Adolescence

  • This can lead to a period of questioning authority in all domains.

• Socioemotional Development in Adolescence

  • Children who are raised as male, on the other hand, are often taught to value such things as autonomy and independence; therefore, many adolescent boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and defining their relation to authority.