Running head: OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY 1

Obedience to authority in perspective Jonestown and My Lai

XAVIER QUEK JIA JING

Psychology

Nanyang Technological University

Dr. Denise De Souza, Instructor

OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY 2

Stanley Milgrams experiment in 1961 has shown that obedience to authority can make people
execute actions that the experiment subjects themselves would not have possibly done so alone.
A man in a lab coat is able to influence the Teacher to administer a fatal electric shock to the
Learner. (Zimbardo, 2012, p.475) Obedience to authority can be defined as the compliance of
instructions from a person with some form of power over another. (McLeod, 2007) We will now
explore how it can be generalized and applied to other situations, and showing that it has a large
impact on hierarchical organizations in harmful ways.

Jonestown

Obedience to authority can lead to tragic consequences when groups or organizations

under an authoritarian figure commit crimes and atrocities. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of
the Peoples Temple in San Francisco managed to convince almost 1000 of his followers to travel
to Guyana to live in Jonestown. Starting out as a church pastor, Jones true intent was to
promote communism in the US and raise money for further Marxist activities. (Svendsen, 2014)
He gradually instilled loyalty towards him and finally, after instigating the murder of Leo Ryan, a
visiting congressman to Jonestown, he convinced the 909 members of his Temple to drink
cyanide-laced drinks to commit suicide. (Svendsen, 2014)

The mystery to this tragedy would be how more than 900 people decided to die with
their friends and family, believing in a cause that is incomprehensible to others. People might
make the mistake of labeling them as mentally unstable. However, we should avoid this
fundamental attribution error and investigate further beyond the scope of an individual to the
situation itself.

Jones had utilized various methods to gain conformity from his followers and to ensure
their loyalty (Dittmann, 2003). He made followers accede to trivial requests of his, such as
donating voluntarily. This would finally escalate to them giving up all their assets to the Temple.
(Svedsen, 2014) This is known as the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Milgrams experiment
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also illustrated this. The shocks delivered to the Learner started out as small voltage. They
would gradually go all the way up to the maximum 450 volts, in which most subjects
surprisingly complied. (Zimbardo, 2012, p.473) This is a parallel to the donations made by
temple members.

Most importantly were his suicide rehearsals dubbed White Nights. He would get
followers to drink what he claimed were poison. This would test members loyalty for him and
also desensitize the thought of suicide on their minds as he speculated that they would be
tortured if they are captured by the United States government.

Critics may disagree that obedience to authority could influence group actions. Even if
the power of authority is present, there will be individuals who do not conform to them and even
take actions to challenge the authority. In the example of Jonestown, there are members of the
Temple who were willing to defect after the arrival of Congressman Ryan. The dissidence of a
few members of the Temple resulted in more than a dozen defections. (Reiterman, 1982, p.512)
The Asch effect would show that independents in the group coupled with the power of ally
predict a cascade effect when in the case of Jonestown; one persons defection would influence
anothers. (Zimbardo, 2012, p.467) However, only a minute fraction of the followers defected,
proving that Jones authority still ruled over the power of the independents.

My Lai Massacre

Another case study to further cement the argument is the My Lai massacre that happened
during the Vietnam War when 300-500 civilians were killed by American troops. The alleged
main perpetrator was Lieutenant William Calley who had been charged for premeditating the
murders by ordering troops to kill non-combatants (Peers, 1970). Did obedience to authority play
a part here? Other than Calley, other commanding officers have ordered the destruction of the
Vietnamese village and had also participated in an attempted cover-up of the incident. (Linder,
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1999) It seems that the authority of the officers in command have brought upon this tragic event.
When the soldiers landed in My Lai, the killings started without warning, Calley was heard
giving orders for the men to shoot. (U.S. Cong., 1970, p.338) It can be assumed that Calley,
claiming to be following the orders from his CO (Commanding Officer), Captain Ernest Medina,
and cascaded the orders to his men. (Calleys, 1970) Thus, we can see how obedience to
authority actually affected the decisions made by these groups. When authority is complied, the
individual might cast off thoughts of dissonance when killing an innocent civilian by
rationalizing that it was just orders passed down.

However, critics might point out that in such a case, obedience to authority may not
account for such an act. Before the massacre, the company suffered casualties from booby traps
and mines. Could it trigger a reprisal attack on a defenseless village? (U.S. Cong., 1970, p.86)
Investigations and court hearings show that many of the soldiers who took part in the massacre
blamed the officers or simply stated that they were following orders.

Even though it may seem like the soldiers themselves wanted to participate in the
massacre, it is undeniable that orders were passed down from Medina and Calley to carry out the
killings. (Linder. 1990) In addition, Calley was considered a nice guy by his men, casting
doubts as to whether he is personally capable of such an act. (U.S. Cong., 1970, p.189) The
obedience towards authority demonstrated by Milgram did play its part here. This further
supports my claim on the dangers of abused authority in hierarchical organizations.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, obedience to authority did affect the actions carried out by such groups, be
it military or religious in nature, as a hierarchy exists and there is a leader. When there is a
presence of authority, there would be a degree of obedience present among its members. And this
is a pivotal factor in the actions of the group in collective.
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REFERENCES

Calley's Trial Puts Emphasis On CO. (1970, December 21). Bangor Daily News. Retrieved September 26, 2016, from
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UiM0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=2OAIAAAAIBAJ&pg=2172,1587244&dq=roschevitz my
lai&hl=en

Dittmann, M. (2003, November). Lessons from Jonestown. Retrieved September 24, 2016, from
http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov03/jonestown.aspx

Linder, D. (1999). Peers Report on the My Lai Incident: A Summary. Retrieved September 26, 2016, from
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/summary_rpt.html

McLeod, S. A. (2007). Obedience to Authority. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html

Reiterman, Tim; Jacobs, John (1982), Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People, Dutton, ISBN 0-525-24136-1

Svendsen, A. K. (2014, March 3). White Nights In Guyana: Leadership, conformity and persuasion in Jonestown and Peoples
Temple. Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=33230

U.S.Cong. (1970). Report of the Department of the Army review of the preliminary investigations into the My Lai incident (W.
R. Peers, Author) [Cong.]. Washington: The Dept.

Zimbardo, P. G., Johnson, R. L., & McCann, V. (2012). 11/Social Psychology. In Psychology core concepts (7th ed., pp. 465-
475). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.