Obedience

System's Perfect Victim 1 Part 1: The By-the-Book Admiral 2 Part 2: The Railroad Manager Who Followed Policy 3 Part 3: The Architect Who Obeyed the Emperor 4 Part 4: The Minister Who Balanced the Books ← Series Home The Perfect Execution of a Fatal Order On June 22, 1893, the Mediterranean Fleet was conducting maneuvers off the coast of Tripoli. Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, commanding from HMS Victoria, signaled his flagship to turn inward toward his second-in-command’s ship, HMS Camperdown. The two battleships, each over 10,000 tons, were to execute a simultaneous 180-degree turn, ending up side by side. Tryon’s staff officers watched in silent horror as they calculated the distance. The turning circle of the Victoria was 800 yards. The ships were only 1,200 yards apart. Rear-Admiral Albert Hastings Markham aboard the Camperdown hesitated. The signal was clear, but impossible. He delayed, hoping for a correcting signal. None came. After four minutes of excruciating silence—a lifetime in naval protocol—Markham obeyed. The Camperdown turned. The Victoria turned. Their bows converged. At 3:34 PM, the Camperdown’s ram pierced the Victoria’s hull below the waterline. Thirteen minutes later, the most powerful battleship in the Royal Navy capsized and sank, taking 358 crewmen with her, including Tryon. His last reported words as he stood impassively on the bridge were: “It’s all my fault.” ...

The Hidden Code of Connection 1 Architects of Reality: How the Social Mind Predicts the World 2 Compliance and Conversion: Navigating the Pressures of Social Influence 3 Justifying the Unthinkable: Authority, Aggression, and Moral Compromise 4 Us vs. Them: The Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Identity 5 Hardwired for Affiliation: Love, Loss, and the Need to Belong ← Series Home The Insidious Power of Obedience to Authority The study of social influence reveals a capacity for compliance and conformity, but an extreme and particularly pernicious form is obedience to authority. Driven by the need to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust, Stanley Milgram conducted his famous obedience studies at Yale in the 1960s to determine how normal individuals could follow immoral orders. In the study, participants (“teachers”) were required to administer increasing levels of electric shocks to a confederate (“learner”) for incorrect word pairings, believing the shocks were real and potentially dangerous. ...