Obedience
Willing or habitual compliance with authority.
Obedience is willing or habitual compliance with authority. The chest is settled in compliance and the body follows. Directions and rules from authority are followed as a sustained pattern. The relationship to the authority structure shapes the state.
Check who you are obeying, and why
Obedience is sometimes wisdom. The traffic signal. The surgeon's instructions. The agreement you made with the people you love. Obedience is sometimes a way to avoid the responsibility of your own judgement. Automatic obedience to authority is dangerous. Many of the worst things in history have been done by people who were just following orders. Cultivate the habit of asking, does this instruction make sense? Does following it align with my values? If yes, obey fully. If no, do not obey, and accept the consequences. The space between obedience and autonomy is where adult life happens. Be in it.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad."
— Andy Warhol
Obedience has a distinctive body signature of compliant engaged response to authority. The chest is settled in compliance. The breath is steady with the engagement. The body follows direction with particular quality. The face shows particular compliant engaged quality. The voice carries particular respectful complying quality when engaging with authority. The body holds itself in a way that suggests sustained orientation toward authority: posture often appropriate to the authority relationship, attention sustained on what authority directs, gestures often communicate the compliant orientation. The state can be sustained over years in particular authority relationships including various professional, military, religious, or other contexts.
Obedience has been studied extensively in social psychology including Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments at Yale University in the early 1960s, which examined how people respond to authority directing them to do harm to others. Various subsequent research has continued examining obedience including its constructive functions and its potential to produce harm when authority directs harmful action. The capacity for obedience appears widely shared though substantial variation exists in how readily it operates and in what contexts.
Obedience arises through specific conditions involving authority relationships. Common patterns include:
Obedience can serve well or produce difficulty depending on what it serves. The following help.
Distinguish legitimate from illegitimate authority
Capacity to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate authority supports better engagement with obedience. Legitimate authority typically operates through appropriate means, addresses appropriate domains, and respects various limits; illegitimate authority typically does not. Building this capacity supports both appropriate obedience and appropriate refusal.
Maintain capacity for appropriate refusal
Even within contexts that warrant obedience generally, maintained capacity for appropriate refusal of unethical or harmful directions supports better functioning. Various traditions including religious, ethical, and various professional traditions have engaged with appropriate refusal when authority directs harmful action. The capacity for refusal is essential alongside capacity for obedience.
Recognise both value and risk
Obedience can serve well in supporting functioning in various contexts including professional, family, and institutional settings; obedience can produce harm when it crosses into excessive compliance with illegitimate authority or harmful directions. Recognising both value and risk supports more discriminating engagement than treating obedience as purely positive or purely problematic.
Address sustained patterns when they produce difficulty
When sustained obedience patterns produce difficulty including compliance with harmful directions, sustained difficulty with appropriate self-direction, or various other difficulty, working with these patterns through therapy or sustained reflection can support broader change.
Engage with research and traditions on obedience
Various research including Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments and various other research has provided substantial insight into obedience including its potential to produce harm. Various ethical and religious traditions have engaged with appropriate obedience and appropriate refusal. Engaging with this research and these traditions supports better understanding.
"Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments at Yale University in the early 1960s examined how people respond to authority, with substantial subsequent research continuing examination of obedience including its constructive functions and potential to produce harm."
— A summary of obedience research
What is obedience?
Obedience is willing or habitual compliance with authority. The body has been organised around sustained pattern of following directions or rules from those in positions of authority, with quality that combines compliance with relationship to authority structure. The chest is settled in compliance. The body follows. There is a quality of doing what authority directs, of operating from sustained willingness or habit of compliance, of engaging with authority through following its directions. Obedience specifically refers to willing or habitual compliance with authority.
Where do people feel obedience in the body?
Obedience has a distinctive signature of compliant engaged response to authority. The chest is settled in compliance. The breath is steady with the engagement. The body follows direction with particular quality. The face shows particular compliant engaged quality. The voice carries particular respectful complying quality when engaging with authority. The body holds itself in a way that suggests sustained orientation toward authority: posture often appropriate to the authority relationship, attention sustained on what authority directs, gestures often communicate the compliant orientation. The state can be sustained over years in particular authority relationships including various professional, military, religious, or other contexts.
How is obedience different from conformity?
Conformity involves matching group patterns. Obedience specifically involves following authority. A person can conform without obedience (matching group patterns without specific authority direction). The two are distinct: conformity responds to group; obedience responds to authority figure or structure. Both involve adjusting behaviour to external direction; they differ in what provides the direction. Conformity adjusts to group norms and patterns; obedience adjusts to specific authority direction whether from individual authority figure or institutional authority. Both can serve well or produce difficulty depending on what they support: appropriate conformity to constructive group norms can support cohesion; problematic conformity to harmful group patterns can produce harm; appropriate obedience to legitimate authority can support functioning; problematic obedience to illegitimate authority or harmful directions can produce significant harm. Research on both has examined how each operates and what conditions support healthy versus problematic forms.
What did Milgram's experiments show?
Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments at Yale University in the early 1960s examined how people respond to authority directing them to do harm to others. The experiments specifically examined whether people would administer what they believed to be harmful electric shocks to another person when directed by experimenter to do so. The research showed substantial obedience even when subjects believed they were causing significant harm; majority of subjects continued to administer what they believed to be increasingly harmful shocks when directed by authority. The research has been substantially discussed and debated in psychology and ethics. The findings raised significant questions about human capacity for obedience to authority including obedience to authority directing harmful action; the research has been used to consider various historical events including how ordinary people may have participated in significant historical wrongs through obedience to authority. Subsequent research has continued examining these questions including various replications, variations, and broader research on obedience. The research has substantially influenced both psychology and broader engagement with how obedience operates. The capacity for obedience to authority directing harmful action appears widely shared though substantial individual variation exists.
When is obedience harmful?
Obedience becomes harmful in various circumstances. Obedience to illegitimate authority that lacks appropriate basis for authority produces harm by supporting authority that does not warrant it. Obedience to directives that violate ethics including directives to harm others, violate important rights, or commit various other wrongs produces harm regardless of the authority's general legitimacy. Sustained excessive obedience that has lost capacity for appropriate refusal produces difficulty because the lost capacity prevents appropriate response to harmful directives. Obedience in contexts where authority operates beyond appropriate domain may produce harm by extending authority beyond what is warranted. Various historical contexts have shown how obedience can support significant harm including various atrocities committed by ordinary people obeying authority. Capacity to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate authority supports better engagement; legitimate authority typically operates through appropriate means, addresses appropriate domains, and respects various limits while illegitimate authority typically does not. Maintained capacity for appropriate refusal of unethical or harmful directions is essential even within contexts that warrant obedience generally. Various ethical and religious traditions have engaged with appropriate refusal when authority directs harmful action.
No source-level citations are stored for this entry yet. The dictionary draws on the broader literature in affective neuroscience, psychology and cross-cultural emotion research. See the About page for the project's wider references.
Obedience sits in the mixed family because of its dual potential to serve well or produce harm. It overlaps with conformity when group patterns are involved, with deference when respect for authority is central, with compliance when broader following of direction is the focus, with what Stanley Milgram's research at Yale University in the early 1960s examined extensively, and with what various ethical and religious traditions have engaged with as significant relational quality with various dimensions of legitimate engagement and appropriate refusal.
See where obedience sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Obedience on the wheel