Authority
The Milgram experiment ran by Stanley Milgram provided some of the most stunning insights into how influential authority can be over others.
People often act in an automated fashion to commands from authority, even if their instincts suggest the commands should not be followed.
Read more about this topic: Influence: Science And Practice
Famous quotes containing the word authority:
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The government, which is the supreme authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many. The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)