Book Reading : Obedience to Authority

Chapter 1:
Author start with an example of Nazi that people follow authority's order even to kill many other ordinary people. It then talks about the experiment which is about a learner and a punish-er  After the experiment  most people reply with "I am just doing what I have been told".  People just escape from the responsibility of what they did. Many people would say just followed the order from above.

Chapter 2:
One important theory is people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake. The study is not done with undergraduate at Yale, but the High Heaven community. Victim's reaction is  important factor for controlling subject's behavior. This chapter explain the procedures of how the experiment will go on depends on the subject's behavior.

Chapter 3:
The author ask subjects to participate in a survey and predict what or when they will stop the experiment  As result, most of them said they will stop the experiment at learner's will or 150 volts. The participates includes psychiatrists, college students, and an audience of middle class adults of varied occupations.

Chapter 4:
As experiment 1, subjects can't hear the learner nor the learner can hear or see the subjects. As result, 26 obeyed the order of experimenter to the end. There are four experiments conduct with 40 adults, which are remote, voice feedback, proximity, and touch proximity. As more directly contact each condition gets, the less obedience.

Chapter 5:
This chapter is taking us from the experiment to the subject's world. It describe all four conditions with different users within it. I was surprise by touch proximity condition and the man just do all the orders without question. For other condition, I expected some of the result to be like what it is. However, many people complain about this experiment when they conduct it which is what I expected.

Chapter 6:
This chapter gives more variation in the experiment  In experiment 5, the experiment change into the actor would mention that he had heart problem. I am so surprise that 26 out of 40 would ignore this fact and continue to the end. In experiment 7, it makes the experimenter leave the room and give instruction by telephone. This decrease the obedience of the subjects. In 9, it's about the subject would notice there is a legal agreement between them. This would increase the disobedience too. In 10, it's about changing the location from Yale University. This also result in lower obedience. In 11, people are freely to choose any lvl of shock, and the mean is around 30.

Chapter 7:
This chapter give more details on how the experiment was. It details out the conversation during the experiment. It shows many people would continue to the end of the experiment with question. They would continue only if the experimenter take the responsibility  There is a German woman refuse to give shock at 45 level which is surprise. 

Chapter 8:
It start with defining three elements of this study, such as position, status, and action.In experiment 12, the role exchanged as learner demand for shocks. The result is every subject stopped administering shocks upon the experimenter's order. Experiment 13 is instead had the authority giving out instructions, it was an ordinary man. Result drop quite a bit. The next few experiment go with authorities change roles.

Chapter 9:
Hierarchy, imitation, explicitness, and voluntarism is important in this experiment  In experiment 18, group effect take in place which two peers would say stop the experiment. In result there is only 10% obedience. In 19, it's about two peer suggested go to the end of the experiment. As result, only 3% refuse to go to the end.

Chapter 10:
Few major points, "organized social life provides survival benefits to individuals who are part of it. Hierarchies can function only when internal modification occurs in the elements of which they are composed." There are two mode for anyone, which are autonomous and systemic mode. In here, it defines why people would administrated  the shock. It's because when a person sees himself under another person from higher status, he will define himself as an instrument to carry out action that other person wants.

Chapter 11:
This chapter talks about why people will not stop carry out the experiment  There are two factors that will cause people to get into agentic state, which are antecedent conditions and binding factors. Antecedent condition includes pre and immediate antecedent condition. binding factors are anxiety  situation obligation,and sequential nature of action.

Chapter 12:
There are several strain that talks about in this chapter - moral, law, cries from learner, self image, and direction from learner. There are few ways to reduce the strain, take away the responsibility, turn around, ask aloud.  There are few consequences for strain, such as disobedience, dissent, physical conversion.

Chapter 13:
This chapter talks about aggression which they define it as action to harm another organism. It said this experiment give condition that people can harm another under science. But actually people gave themselves to authority, and that's the key.

Chapter 14:
People states there are three problems of the methods used in this experiment  such as people are not typical   they didn't believe they are actually giving shocks, and it's not possible to generate this to world.
Chapter 15:
This last chapter gives an example of why solider obey orders to kill people. This is mainly because that they learned they need to obey the authority during training, before get into army, and in mission. The way it works is separate them from the world, and give them harsh way of punishment and reward. This will makes them remember what is right or wrong.

To the whole book:
This book talks about obedience to authority is exist in many places, even in a lab. Through out this lab, people obey the authority is due to many reason. I do think these factors do make sense and help me to understand more how authority in the society work. The one society that we all are in is school right now. We learned how to obey professors, if we dont then we might fail the class. This is because they have more authority level than us which they can give orders to us.