Particular personalities have more influence than others are some of the essential aspects of social interactions. The definition of social power is outlined as the person's ability to make conformity even when the individuals being inclined might attempt to resist those variations. Senior personalities have power over their juniors, and more generally, it can be said that the individuals in authority influence their juniors. Precisely, power means the process of social influence itself to those who have power and can control others. A remarkable set of studies done by Stanley Milgram demonstrated the powerful capability of those at the helm of authority to influence others (Creative common attributes, 2015). Milgram interest was to understand the factors that make persons obey the instructions given by the individual in control of the authority. He planned a study to observe the extent to which an individual who presents himself as an authoritative entity would be able to produce obedience, as well as the extent which leads people to cause harm to other persons.
Like a lot of other social psychologists, Milgram was encouraged by the desire to understand how powerful individuals could produce obedience. He used newspaper advertisements to recruit men from a wide-ranging variety of backgrounds to partake in this study (Hayden, 2004). In the lab, the participants were introduced to a man who the partaker thought was another study participant, but in reality was an experimental confederate. The goal of the study was explained to the partakers by the experimenter, which was to study the effects of punishment on learning. After the participants agreed to the research, it was explained by the researcher that one would be a teacher and the other would be the student. Both slip papers that were given had indicated teacher, allowing the associate to pretend that he had been allocated to be the learner and thus to guarantee that the actual partaker was always the teacher.
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The learner was strapped into what seemed to be an electric chair when they were separated into the adjacent room between the teachers and learners. The experimenter told them that this was done to ensure that the learner does not get away. Before the actual test at some point, the teacher was given a sample of electric shock from a generator electroshock to feel what learner would experience as the supposed shock during the experiment. Both teacher and learner could communicate but would not see each other. The teacher was to teach the learner a list of word pairs given by the researcher. The teacher would read the word to the learner who in response would press a button to show his answer. The teacher would administer a shock to the learner if the answer were wrong or incorrect, with a gradual upsurge of the voltage of 15 volts for each answer given incorrectly and for the correct reply to the question the teacher would read the next word. The participants were made to believe that for each wrong answer, the learner was getting real shocks, but there were no shocks. After separation of teacher and learner, a tape recorder was set up and integrated with the generator electroshock, which played recorded sounds for each shock stage. During the increase in voltage of the fake shocks, the learner would yell and complain loudly and banged the wall that separated him with the teacher repeatedly. The learner fell silent when the highest voltages were attained.
Milgram's research results were shocking; the responses were different although all the partakers gave the initial slight levels of shock. Some of the participants refused to continue after the levels of voltage reached 150 volts, despite the persistence of the experimenter to carry on with shock level increase. However, others continued to ask the questions, and administering shocks, under the stress of the experimenter, who commanded them to carry on. Even though the shock was marked as danger and the response from the learner had stopped, participants amounting to 65% continued with the shock applied to the learner all the way up to the maximum of 450 volts. As far as the study went, in sum, half of the men who participated had shocked another person to death in the notion of a supposed learning experiment.
Through Milgram's study, we can observe provoking a situation of how people who have influence can control the conducts of other individuals. In our understanding of the social psychological factor that produces conformity and obedience would help us explain the proceedings that happened at Abu Ghraib in the year 2004, at a prison in Iraq where the United States armed forces physically as well as psychologically tortured their Iraq inmates. The results of Milgram's study can be viewed inside the walls of Abu Ghraib prison. Many of the soldiers at the Abu Ghraib said during the investigations that they were obeying instructions by army intelligence for them to obtain facts from the inmates (American Psychological Association, 2004). The soldiers were comfortable in taking photos of the abused doing the act to be seen as a routine. The situation reality was that the intelligence of the military had influenced a number of guards into inflicting these abusive acts due to lack of guidance in prison. Even though they could have thought the exploitation as wrong, the soldiers were following orders from the military intelligence which had become the authority figure. One of the soldiers suspected of the abuse said that the military intelligence officers had encouraged them for the great job they did as the inmates were now cooperating in giving positive information.
The authority figure in the situation of Abu Ghraib prison came in due to lack of official authority around the prison and peer pressure. Despite complaints of exploitation no one seemed to recognize or stop the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, and the situation was halted due to outsiders acting as authoritative figures and making the activities to stop (Romm, 2017). Like Milgram's study, the military intelligence was able to impose a form of peer pressure into the group of guards, who were merely normal individuals made to follow orders and not stand against authority agencies.
The Abu Ghraib prison activities revealed that obedience to the individuals in authority is a fundamental principle of any human social association around the globe. Some outlined hierarchy in which some personalities or group practice control over other individuals has virtually been developed in every society. Military seniors at all stages should have an intense responsibility to create a unit of social environment and settings that support positive plus principled conduct an analysis of experience, in addition to the quick and efficient address to any harmful or unprincipled practices (Bartone, n.d.). There is a greater need for employment military seniors who possess a mature self-controlled, with a broad perspective and strong moral compass as military operations and situations become more uncertain, unclear as well as unstructured. The senior leaders and commanders must make sure that the external conditions and principles work to strengthen appropriate viewpoints in addition to conducts. Leaders must also ensure that when in a foreign mission the outlined rules and standards are engaged including the chain of authority across all delegations. Training and development of skills for soldiers are essential however personal development to a level that allows mature; confident and more fundamental mental attitude should be encouraged and addressed.
References
American Psychological Association. (2004). Demonstrating the power of social situations via a simulated prison experiment . Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/research/action/prison.aspx.
Bartone, P. T. (n.d.). Understanding prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib: Psychological considerations and leadership implications. PsycEXTRA Dataset . doi:10.1037/e301022005-007
Creative common attributes. (2015). Obedience, power, and leadership/ principles of social psychology . Retrieved from http://open.lib.umn.edu/socialpsychology/chapter/7-2-obedience-power-and-leadership/.
Hayden, T. (2004). Abu Ghraib . Retrieved from http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Hayden_090704,00.html.
Romm, C. (2017). Rethinking one of psychology's most infamous experiments . Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/.
Shuttleworth, M. (2008). Milgram experiment ethics - should we use deception in experiments? Retrieved from https://explorable.com/milgram-experiment-ethics.
