FREE ESSAY ON STUDIES IN OBEDIENCE

STUDIES IN OBEDIENCE

Psychologists, social scientists and writers have long been interested in the 'whys' of
obedience and disobedience; many experiments have been conducted to help in understanding
these issues and the influences exerted by outside forces on individuals in their
decision making processes. Unthinking obedience can be as dangerous as unthinking
rebellion in any society, neither is done with self-reflection as a part of the process;
however, care must be used in determining the appropriate time for thoughtful
disobedience so that society is not destroyed by the dissention.
In a short story by Shirley Jackson entitled "The Lottery," reprinted in Writing and
Reading Across the Curriculum (382), a fictional New England town is introduced in which
all the villagers participate annually in a lottery used to determine which inhabitant is
to be stoned to death; performed out of habit, it demonstrates ritualized, unthinking
obedience to custom. After the publication of the story in 1948 by the New Yorker, many
people objected to the perceived implication that the people of New England or America
could be as blindly obedient as the characters in the story to any custom, good or bad. 
As Erich Fromm observed in "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" (377),
disobedience is the first step towards independence and freedom. He noted that human
history began in an act of disobedience, that of Adam and Eve's "...original sin..."
(378), which set man free to develop and grow. One of his main points is "In order to
disobey, one must have the courage to be alone, to err and to sin" (380).
Along with Fromm, Solomon Asch, noted psychologist, asserts in his article, 'Opinions and
Social Pressure" (336), that it is most likely the case that a solitary person facing a
group espousing a different opinion from his own will go along with the group, even in
the face of physical evidence showing the group opinion to be blatantly incorrect, rather
than face the disapproval of the group. He noted that having one person disagree with the
group frees others to disagree as well, and allows them to have a opinion differing from
the individual's as well as the group's. Asch insists, "Life in society requires
consensus as an indispensable condition" (342). Without consensus, society could never
have come into being; compromise is essential to human relations, without it, anarchy
reigns.
Later, Stanley Milgram, "The Perils of Obedience" (343), conducted experiments in
obedience on subjects who were exposed to authority figures demanding the injury of other
people in the experiment who failed to correctly answer questions asked of them. The
subjects answered the demands for mild injury with ready compliance, the demands for
stronger measures with protest and compliance, and lethal injury in two ways: protest and
refusal or protest and compliance. Most complied. Some subjects later tried to excuse
their obedience and place to responsibility on the experimenter, but most admitted
responsibility for their own behavior. The majority of the subjects committed unthinking
obedience and would likely have killed the person they were instructed to injure had this
been a test of intelligence and not one of obedience. 
From all four: Asch, Fromm, Jackson and Milgram, comes a repeated theme of unthinking
obedience, of individuals' decisions being controlled by outside influences. In Jackson's
"The Lottery," the social pressures are apparent in the seemingly innocent banter
covering the nervousness of the villagers as they gather on the green to await the
drawing of the lottery tickets. Fromm's position would suggest that disobedience is
necessary for the society of the village in "The Lottery" to progress and grow: unless
and until they are able to break away from unthinking obedience to what he calls
"authoritarian conscience" (379), the village will never be able to evolve into a better
society. According to Asch's research, if even one person had been willing to face all
the other villagers and point out where their society was going wrong, there might have
been a chance that others would have broken out of the mold of unthinking obedience and
the end result might have been different in "The Lottery," different for the villagers as
a group and different for Mrs. Hutchinson as an individual. Milgram's research supports
Mrs. Hutchinson's being unable to break away from her unthinking obedience; even as the
mob was preparing to stone her, she never said that the villagers were doing wrong, just
that she hadn't had a fair chance. 
Thoughtful, timely disobedience is better than thoughtless obedience, as is demonstrated
in all of the foregoing works. Compliance and obedience are necessary for any society to
function, but in order for a society to grow and evolve, as it must, the individual
members must willingly face public disapproval and censure, paying the price brought on
themselves by asserting their thoughtful disobedience when their society takes a wrong
turn. In this way alone can society progress, grow and become better 
Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography
Baer, L., Rausch, S.L., Ballantine, H.T. Jr., Martuza, R., Dimino, C., Jenike, M.A.
(1995). Cingulotomy for intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder. Prospective long-term
follow-up of 18 patients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 52(5), 384-392.
Study performed to assess long-term changes in patients suffering from intractable,
incapacitating obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD] following cingulotomy. Out of 18
treated, 30% observed to have significant improvement in condition following surgery.
Related to thesis of positive changes. 
Cohen, R.A., Kaplan, R.F., Moser, D.J., Jenkins, M.A., Wilkinson, H. (1999). Impairments
of attention after cingulotomy. Neurology, 53 (4), 819-824.
Cingulate determined to play role in control of emotional behavior and attention. Study
involved testing of 12 subjects preoperatively, then 3, and 12 months post-operatively.
Test results show serious impairment in areas of attention and executive function 3
months after surgery, and significant attention impairment after 12 months. Supports
thesis of negative changes.
Davis, K.D., Hutchinson, W.D., Lozano, A.M., Dostrovsky, J.O. (1994). Altered pain and
temperature perception following cingulotomy and capsulotomy in a patient with
schizoaffective disorder. Pain, 59 (2), 189-199.
Cingulotomy and capsulation increased patient's heat and cold perception, causing with
increased perception of pain. Supports thesis of negative changes.
Jeinke, M.A. (1998). Neurological treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. British
Journal of Psychiatry, Supplement, (35), 79-90. 
Some patients suffering from nonresponsive obsessive-compulsive disorder can obtain
partial relief from neurosurgery: cingulotomy; capsulotomy; limbic leucotomy; subcaudate
tractotomy. Partial relief of symptoms supports thesis of positive results.
Sabbatini, R.E.M. (1997). The history of psychosurgery. Brain & Mind Magazine, 1 (2). 
Defines and examines psychosurgery, including lobotomies, and looks at the practice of
neurosurgery from prehistoric times through the present. Neutral in support of thesis.
Webpage of Massachusetts General Hospital. Describes procedure for receiving cingulotomy
for medically intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain syndrome,
refractory depression, and addictive disorders. Neutral in support of thesis.