Abstract
Obedience to authority is an essential field of psychological research. Previous research mainly examined the effects of subjects own attributes on obedience, but rarely examined the effects of authoritys nature. Starting with the legitimacy of authority, this study examined the effects of instrumental and relational legitimacy on subjects willingness to obey and predicted the existence of significant main effects and interactions between the two types of legitimacy. This result suggests that the authoritys legitimacy has a significant effect on willingness to obey, and when legitimacy is high, subjects will be more willing to obey. In addition, when judging the authoritys legitimacy, subjects will emphasize both instrumental and relational legitimacy, and will attach more importance to the authoritys instrumental legitimacy. Also, this study considered several possible results (no significant interaction or no effect found) and attempted to explain them. The assumptions of this research provide new insights into the research of obedience to authority and help researchers to better examine the effects of the nature of authority on obedience.
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