Recently I was driving to a very important meeting when I got caught up in some local traffic.
Unbeknown to me Crystal Palace was playing Manchester United in a very important game for both sides and it seemed like everyone in Croydon was going to the match, hence the gridlock.
Anyhow, I decided to take a short cut through some of the back doubles, everything was going swimming well until I had to take a hairpin turn in the road and as I was going down this sharp bend I suddenly had to slam on my brakes as I came head to head with a car coming in the opposite direction.
Busted, I wasn’t going anywhere.
We were well and truly stuck.
I had a row of cars behind and so did she. So we attempted to squeeze by each other, and when I say squeeze I mean squeeze.
As we inched our cars passed each other the only thing that touched were the bumpers, and as bumpers are for bumping we were both cool about it.
The manoeuvre took about 10 minutes but as we passed each other we both gave a nod of approval and a palpable sense of triumphalism as though we had achieved the impossible.
I suppose it was the equivalent to Crystal Palace beating Manchester United (Sorry Palace fans!)
Ten minutes down the road, as I was stopped at the traffic lights, I heard knock, knock, knock on my side window.
As I looked up there was an RAF soldier in full regalia, with RAF uniform, hat, stripes and pilots wings to boot, demanding that I get out of the car.
Now bearing in mind I am at the traffic lights and late for a meeting, I thought he can’t be serious.
So, to his annoyance, I pulled my car over and then approached him to find out what all the fuss was about.
I have got you on camera, he blurted out. On camera, I replied. Yes on camera, hit and run, not stopping to report an accident.
What accident, for the past half an hour I was driving so slow I couldn’t even hit a tortoise crossing the road.
Come with me he demanded. So off I followed.
Jump into the passenger’s side please sir.
Now this chap had a brand new Austin Martin DB9, one beautiful car. I said to him can you pull the seat back a bit so that I can get in.
That’s as far as the seat can go back.
Somehow or another I squeezed into the passenger seat with my feet still hanging outside the car and the seat creaking under my weight.
Then he showed a short footage of me and the car that I had just ‘miraculously’ squeezed by.
Sorry, where’s the accident, surely you haven’t stopped me because of this?
He then took my details down and said he has access on his database to the other driver and would be approaching her to see if she wanted to press charges.
Long story short… she didn’t, as there wasn’t a scratch on either of the cars.
My first thoughts were that this guy surely hasn’t got anything better to do. Or he had had this camera fitted to his car for months and this was the first time in years he actual had a supposed ‘hit and run’ incident to film.
But something more profound crossed my mind. And that was how, just because this man had a uniform, he was able to get me out of my car and into his when I knew I hadn’t done anything plus I was late for a meeting.
Why profound?
Playing Obedience is common element found in everyday life.
From obeying teachers in school, security guards at events, policemen directing traffic, to safety signs. And linking back to my experience, even an RAF officer on the road, we obey all the time, often blindly.
However, blind obedience is a dangerous thing and I will like to illustrate this point with an experiment that was conducted in the 1960s called The Milgram experiment.
The Milgram experiment was named after Stanly Milgram who conducted a number of controversial experiments in psychology.
Milgram wanted to find out if people would follow orders, even if the orders went against their conscience. He proved they would. There have been many repetitions and variations, with similar results.
Milgram set up a series of experiments where participants (acting as “teachers”) gave what they thought were electric shocks to “learners”.
The “learners” were actually actors, and the shocks were spoof (not real). The learners reacted as if they were in real pain. As the “shocks” increased, they acted as if they are in very bad pain.
If at any time the subject (“teacher”) wanted to stop the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
- Please continue.
- The experiment requires that you continue.
- It is absolutely essential that you continue.
- You have no other choice, you must go on.
If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum “450-volt” shock three times in succession.
Milgram found that some of the “teachers” became very nervous. For example, they would laugh and be unable to control it.
Before Milgram did his experiment, he asked fourteen Yale University psychology students what they thought the results would be.
On average, the students thought that 1.2% of the “teachers” would give the biggest electric shock of 450 volts.
In fact, in Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40) of participants administered the experiment’s final massive 450-volt shock.
Milgram wrote about the experiment in his book Obedience to Authority: an experimental view. It was published in 1974. Milgram’s experiments have been done again by many psychologists, with very similar results.
Milgram offered two theories:
The first is the theory of conformism, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person.
A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person’s behavioral model.
The second is the agentic state theory, where “the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view themselves as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and they therefore no longer see themselves as responsible for their actions.
Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.
Are you the type of person who lets other people make the decisions for you or tell you what you should or should not do.
This maybe an authority figure, not necessarily in a uniform but it could be someone you look up to and older sibling a trusted friend or even your parents.
If that is the case, well then it is high time you learn to think for yourself and plan your life out for yourself and not how some else expects you to live it.
Will you make mistakes along the way of course you will. Everyone makes mistakes that why the put erasers on the end of pencils. And as the saying goes, a person who hasn’t made a mistake has never tried anything new.
When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it. In future posts I will be continuing on the theme of not letting other people influence your decisions.
Thought For The Day
“Unsuccessful people make decisions based on their current situation; successful people make decisions based on where they want to be”.
