An Original Way of Looking into Obedience and Disobedience: Different Genders Facing Different Kinds of Authorities

Abstract

Various experiments about obedience and disobedience to authority have been taken place in the past decades. However, it is a brand new task for academics where genders and types of authorities are on cross analysis. Are female more likely to obey to educated professionals or severe dominators? Will genders affect people’s attitudes to the governors? In this work, an experiment is designed based on Milgram’s original experiment of obedience, in order to answer the answers previously mentioned. Different reactions from different genders will be tested when they are facing prestige or dominance authorities separately. The method of testing level of obedience is altered from the original electric shock experiment taken by Milgram to a new method of using hot sauce to measure participants’ obedience to authorities. The hypothesis in existence suggested that females will show a higher level of obedience to dominance authorities rather than prestige authorities, and their obedience to dominant authorities will be relatively high comparing to males, while males will show a higher level of obedience to prestige authorities than dominant authorities, and showing relatively high obedience to prestigious authorities. This work aims to show a new way to understand gender difference in behaviors, and wish to open a gate of behaviour study and gender cognition study.