One of the fundamental aspects of social interaction is that some individuals have more influence than others. social power can be defined as the ability of a person to create conformity, even when the people being influenced may attempt to resist those changes. bosses who have power over their workers, parents have power over children. And more generally, we can say to those in authority have power over their subordinates. In short, power refers to the process of social influence itself. Those who have power are those who are most able to influence others.

The powerful ability of those you know for you to control others was demonstrated in a remarkable set of studies performed by Stanley Milgram in 1963. Milgram was interested in understanding the factors that lead people to obey the orders given by people in authority, he designed a study in which he could observe the extent to which A person who presented himself as an authority will be able to produce obedience, even to the extent of leading people to cause harm to others. Like his professor Solomon Asch, no grumps interest in social influence, in part from his desire to understand how the presence of a powerful person, particularly the German dictator, out of Hitler, who ordered the killing of millions of people during World War Two, could produce obedience. Under Hitler's direction, the German SS troops over so the execution of 6 million Jews as well as others, undesirables, including political and religious descendants, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people and prisoners of war.

Milgram used newspaper ads to recruit men and in one study women from a wide variety of backgrounds to participate in his research. One of the research participants arrived at the lab. He or she was interested To a man who the participant believe was another research participant, but who was actually an experimental Confederate. the experimenter explained that the goal of the research was to study the effects of punishment on learning. After the participant and the Confederate board consented to participate in this study, the researcher explained that one of them would be randomly assigned to be the future, and the other the learner, they were each given a slip of paper and asked to open it and to indicate what is sad. In fact, both both papers read feature which allows the Confederate to pretend that he had been assigned to be the learner and that's for sure that the actual participant was always the teacher.

Well, the research participants now the teacher booked on the learner was taken into a joint shock room and strapped to an electrode. It was to deliver the punishment, experiment or explain it The teacher's job would be to sit in the control room and to read a list of word fears to the learner. After the feature read the least one, it would be the learners job to remember which words when together. For instance, if the word appear was a blue sofa, the teacher would say the word blue on the testing trials, and the learner would have to indicate which of the four possible words how soft or cat or carpet was the correct answer by pressing one or four buttons in front of him a 30 experiment or gave the teacher a sample shock, which was said to be at 45 wolf to demonstrate that the shock really were painful.

The experiment that began the research participant first read the list of words to the learner and then began testing on his learning. The shock for now, as shown here in this picture, you can see was presented in front of the feature and the learners was not visit visible in the shop chrome experiment. sat behind. The teacher explained to him that each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to press one of the sharks, which is to administer the shark. They were to begin with the smallest possible shark which is 15 holes. But with each mistake, the shark was increased by one level, which is an additional 15 watch what the learner who was of course actually an experimental Confederate was alone in the shop room he entrapped himself from the shock machine and brought out a tape recorder that he used to play a pre recorded series of responses that the teacher could hear through the wall there on the teacher heard the learner seat Oh, after the first few shots after the next few mistakes on the shock level 350 volts the learner was hurt explain.

Get me out of here please Maha starting to bother me. I refuse to go on lead me out. As a shock rate about 270 volts, the learners protected More women in a 300 gold. Phil Lerner proclaimed that he was not going to ask for any more questions from 303 30 wolves and the learner was silent. the experimenter responded to participants questions at this point it was asked Eddie with a script response indicated that they should continue reading the questions in applying increasing shock when the learner because respond. Before Milgram conducted his study, he described the procedure to three groups, college students, middle class adults, and subcribe freeze asking each of them if the thought of the will sharp participant who made a sufficient error at the highest end of the scale, which is 450 was 100% of all three corrupt schools, they would have no so he didn't ask them what percentage of other people wouldn't be likely to use the highest end of the shock scale.

At which point did the three groups demonstrated remarkable consistency by all producing rather optimistic Estimates of around 1% to 2%. The results of the actual experiments were themselves what was quite shocking. Although all of the participants gave the initial milk level of shock responses worried that some refused to continue after about 150 despite existence of the experimenter to continue to increase the shock level. The waters however, continue to present the questions and to administer the shocks on third the pressure of the experiments or who demanded that they continue. In the end 65% of the participants continued giving the shop to the learner all the way up to the 450 volts maximum. Even though that shop was marked as dangerous server shop in your head be no response heard from the fourth eCPM for several trials in almost two thirds of the man who participated had, as far as they knew, shocked another person to that Oh, as far as Suppose experiments on learning.

Studies similar to Malcolm's finding have seen been conducted over the world with obedience rates ranging from a high of 90% in Spain and the Netherlands to a vote of 16% among Australian women, in case you're thinking that such high levels of obedience wouldn't be observed in today's modern culture, there is evidence that they would be recently, Milgram results were almost exactly it replicated using men and women from a wide variety of ethnic groups. In a study conducted by Jerry burger at Santa Clara University. And in this replication of the Milgram experiment, 65% of the men and 73% of the women agreed to administer an increasingly painful electric shock when they were older to final authority figure in the replication however, the participants were not allowed to go beyond the hundred and 50 bull sharks. Although it might be tempting to propose that the Milgram experiments demonstrate that people are making evil creatures who are ready to shock others that Milgram didn't believe that this was the case.

Rather, he felt that it was the social situation and not the people themselves that was responsible for the behavior. And one final note here about Milgram study is that although Milgram explicitly focused on the situational factors that lead to greater obedience, these have been found to interact with certain personality characteristics. Yet another example versus to change the interaction, specifically out for theories and a tendency to prefer things to be simpler rather than complex and to hold traditional values. Then we have consciousness, which is a tendency to be reasonable orderly independently, and agreeableness a tendency to be good natured, cooperative, and tracking app are all related to higher level levels of Obedience whereas, higher moral reasoning which is the manner in which one makes ethical judgments and social intelligence, and ability to develop a clear perception of the situation using situational cues, both predict the resistance for the demands of the authority figure.

After we have discussed both conformity and obedience, we have to see that they are not the same thing. While both are forms of social influence, we must often tend to conform to our peers, whereas we obey those in positions of authority. Furthermore, the pressure to conform tends to be implicit, whereas the order to be is typically rather explicit. And finally, whereas people don't like admitting to having conform, especially in your normative social influence, they will more rightly pointed to the authority figure as the source of your actions, especially when they have done something they are embarrassed or ashamed.