(Don’t) Do As You’re Told!

Resident of Daulatabad Fort, Aurangabad, India (November 2010)

Image courtesy: Paavan Karia

In 1963, social psychologist Milgram explored the effect of authority on obedience. The question was how much pain would one person inflict on another simply because they were ordered to do so?

Participants were asked to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to a “learner “(actor), if they answered questions incorrectly. If they hesitated to administer the shocks, they were pressured to do so by the experimenter. (In reality, no shocks were given, but participants believed that they were being inflicted).

Milgram found that 65% of the participants were willing to inflict the maximum voltage level as punishment. Only a minority questioned the experiment and refused to inflict the shocks.

It appears that the essence of obedience lies in conditioning and to some extent, a diminished sense of responsibility. It appears that we are culturally conditioned to obey. How much of that conditioning takes place at home, in schools and educational institutions?

Before Milgram's experiment, in the 1950s, Solomon Asch conducted experiments to study conformity in groups. He found that nearly 75 percent of the participants went along with the rest of the group at least once, even though the group opinion was clearly erroneous. Apart from the need to be liked and an aversion to isolation, perhaps this is based on a belief in the superior wisdom of the group.

"The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct."

Interestingly, Asch also found that subjects conformed much less if they had an ally, and that even a single ally made a big difference to conformity levels. So, support from just one person can give people the courage to dissent.

Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King are icons for dissent. They were able to give millions of people the courage to disobey the establishment and they were the driving force of major civil disobedience movements that changed the world.

So how do we foster an education that encourages people to live authentic lives, and develop a self-awareness that enables them to question and transcend their own conditioning to be true to themselves?

Remember John Lennon’s beautiful song Stand By Me?

“When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No I won't be afraid
No I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me…”