A fascinating area of research for social psychologists concerns individuals' tendencies toward conformity and obedience in different social situations. These different social situations may involve peer pressure, or the command of an authority figure, or more general social rules, mores and customs. Often times people obey rules because it is in their interest to do so. For example, one obeys traffic rules in order to avoid getting a ticket. Such actions are rational and aimed toward self-preservation. In some circumstances, a person may simply desire to be accepted into the group. For example, a teenager may smoke, make graffiti or even participate in gang rape in order to be accepted into the social group. Prison situations also provide a rich terrain for understanding how self-preservation under peer pressure forces inmates into behaviors which they might not normally undertake. But, some of the truly intriguing cases involve circumstances in which a person may behave in ways which are quite contrary to how he or she would behave if acting without these external influences, and these actions do not appear to be guided by simple self-preservation.
Social psychologists are interested in the degree to which societal influences and pressures can cause an individual to act in ways other than he or she would act, even to the extent of violating their own personal and moral values and beliefs, and the potential consequences of such actions. A crucial question guiding my inquiry is this. When a person yields to authority, acting in ways he or she would not ordinarily act, is it due to the rational self-interest of self-preservation in order to avoid the sanctions which the authority could impose on them, or is it instead that by acting under the command of the authority, the person fails to take ownership of the action, and feels that he or she is simply acting as an extension of someone else, and therefore is not respons...