Biological Factors Of Obedience

An impulse is defined as a sudden wish or urge that prompts an unpremeditated act or feeling; an abrupt inclination. Two of the main human impulses are peace and violence. For most people the impulse to live a peaceful life, follow moral standards and be a productive member of society comes naturally. However there is the other impulse and that is to express violent or immoral behaviors. There are several factors that can contribute to bad behavior or someone acting out from, past situations they have personally been apart of, to an act or behavior witnessed repeatedly that was deemed appropriate to repeat themselves. While abusive past situations can cause violent or immoral behavior, immoral behavior in many cases should be blamed on the

Again let’s take the facts and break them down on why a person would be so willing to do harm to another person like that. First there is a person who is viewed as an expert, a person of authority simply because he is wearing a white coat and has a clip board and repeatedly says the same phrase over and over again is instructing you to commit this act. There is a compensation of $4.00 being offered for just doing as your told and I could really use the money, after all I’m in the teaching chair not the learner chair I’m administering the shocks not receiving them. In this situation I believe it was a combination of biological factors as well as the situation that make the bad behavior come out. At any time that person could get up and walk out of the experiment, however something in their brain tells them it’s ok to keep going. In the chapter Obscura, in the book Opening Skinners Box, Lauren Slater writes “Sixty-five percent of my subjects behaved just as you did. It is totally normal for a person to make the choices you did in the situation we put you in. You have nothing to feel badly about.” (38) This is a combination of both environment and brain chemistry that makes a person continue on after all sixty-five percent of the participants were willing to harm another person.

Biological factors although played a part I didn’t feel were very present in either of these situations. It is human impulse to do as your told and not to question authority or experts. There have been several studies on violence and how that relates to a gene known as the MAO-A gene also dubbed the “warrior gene” although the results have been inconsistent. In the article Your Honor, My Genes Made Me Do It, Judith G. Edersheim, Bruce H. Price, and Jordan W. Smoller contributors to the Wall Street Journal write “More than one in three men carry this genetic variant, but the vast majority don’t commit violent crimes. At most, this variant may produce a small increase in the risk of antisocial behavior among men with a history of abuse.” Genetics or biology alone does not cause savage or immoral behavior in people. Studies like this one help prove environment and the situation itself have more to do with how people behave or react than anything else. In the article Your Honor, My Genes Made Me Do It, it states “Human violence is a complicated and multifactor behavior and is not now-and may never be reduced to a series of genetic variations or mutations.” A lot of how people react to situations just depends on the situation itself. If you’re an impulsive individual often times they will react first and think about their actions later whereas a more conservative person may like to think out