Comparing Laurence Behrens And Leonard J. Rosen's Obedience To Authority
1173 Words5 Pages
Authors Laurence Behrens, and Leonard J. Rosen say, in “Obedience to Authority,” “Would you obey an order to inflict pain on other person?” (572). If a person of authority ordered people to put a powerful volt electrical shock on another innocent human being, would people obey their direct orders? Obedience is the change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure. Most people go against their own instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the dangerous instructions of authority figures. We often change our behaviors and attitudes to match the behaviors and attitudes of the people around us. However, the one reason for this conformity is a concern about what other people think of us. People think…show more content… In “Obedience to Authority” Behrens and Rosen say, “In less-dramatic ways, conflicts over the extent to which we obey orders surface in everyday life” (573). Ethics are moral decisions people make based on what they believe is right or wrong. Back in Ukraine at the middle school, I faced ethical, moral dilemma in the 7th grade. Most of the time I felt quite happy as a student in school, but there was one thing I really didn’t like at all. Every day I saw the same boy in my class bully and tease the same girl. He was very careful to tease the girl where the teachers wouldn’t see it happen. It was the same thing every day. What was harder for me to deal with was the fact that no one ever said anything to the teachers. Every day I struggled with the same question of whether or not to tell on the bully. I feared that if I went to a teacher it would get out that I was the one who tattled, and I didn’t want the boy to start bullying me instead. I also knew how most of the kids in my class felt about tattletales, so I just ignored it and didn’t tell anything about it. So, the dilemma in my 7th grade mind was, should I tattle, or should I ignore it? In “Group Minds” Doris Lessing says, “My mind is my own, my opinions are chosen by me, I am free to do as I will, and at the worst the pressures on me are economic, that is, I may be too poor to do as I want” (595). Furthermore, now when I see the situation where I need to speak up, I speak more often to resist groupthink. Group thinking demonstrates the power of the social situation to change person thought, feeling or