it is natural to expect that good reasons exist for the motivation. In the
case of obedience to authority, even a brief consideration of human social
organization offers justification aplenty. A multilayered and widely
accepted system of authority confers an immense advantage upon a
society. It allows the development of sophisticated structures for re-
source production, trade, defense, expansion, and social control that
would otherwise be impossible. The other alternative, anarchy, is a state
that is hardly known for its beneficial effects on cultural groups and
one that the social philosopher Thomas Hobbes assures us would render
life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Consequently, we are
trained from birth that obedience to proper authority is right and dis-
obedience is wrong. The essential message fills the parental lessons,
the schoolhouse rhymes, stories, and songs of our childhood and is
carried forward in the legal, military, and political systems we encounter
as adults. Notions of submission and loyalty to legitimate rule are ac-
corded much value in each.
Religious instruction contributes as well. The very first book of the
Bible, for example, describes how failure to obey the ultimate authority
produced the loss of paradise for Adam, Eve, and the rest of the human
race. Should that particular metaphor prove too subtle, just a bit further
into the Old Testament we can read—in what might be the closest bib-
lical representation of the Milgram experiment—the respectful account
of Abraham’s willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of his
young son, because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn
it this story that the correctness of an action was not adjudged by such
considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or
usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.
Abraham’s tormented ordeal was a test of obedience, and he—like
Milgram’s subjects, who perhaps had learned an early lesson from
him—passed.
Stories like those of Abraham and Milgram’s subjects can tell us much
about the power of and value for obedience in our culture. In another
sense, however, they may be misleading as to the way obedience typic-
ally occurs. We rarely agonize to such a degree over the pros and cons
of authority’s demands. In fact, our obedience frequently takes place
in a click, whirr fashion, with little or no conscious deliberation. Inform-
ation from a recognized authority can provide us a valuable shortcut
for deciding how to act in a situation.
After all, as Milgram himself suggests, conforming to the dictates of
authority figures has always had genuine practical advantages for us.
Early on, these people (for example, parents, teachers) knew more than
we did, and we found that taking their advice proved beneficial—partly
because of their greater wisdom and partly because they controlled our
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 163