English 1310-04
28 October 2011
Obedience as an act can be traced back to the very beginnings of human history. The common belief has always been to obey authority at all cost. This act has never been questioned because authority corresponds to the common belief that respecting authority and obeying them will lead you to success in all aspects of life. Obedience is not defined to specific situations and its context can be portrayed in various ways. For example, Erich Fromm writes in his essay, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem; “Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of disobedience.” This statement suggests that everything which we perceived to be …show more content…

With this in mind, the acts of terror in the world, whether they be big or small can be explained because there perception of themselves in respect to others is skewed by many factors. These factors include power and greed but do not include obedience. The question of whether obedience to authority is good remains.
Decisions derive from situations from which one places him or herself in. The common belief is that major decisions come from the source of personal morals. Ross and Nisbett explain observations taken through there experiments; undergraduates taking a course in psychology react positively to the class because they are introduced with new material that is new and rewarding for them. However, as graduate students immerse themselves more into the teachings of psychology they find that the studies which they found intriguing before, consume them with new ways of thinking. This knowledge challenges what they perceived about human behavior, society and ultimately reveals that the nature of the world is incomprehensible. Ross and Nisbett conclude that; “peoples inflated belief in the importance of personality traits and dispositions, together with their failure to recognize the importance of situational factors in affecting behavior, has been termed the ‘fundamental attribution error’.” This statement gives us a new perspective upon the subject of obedience to