Causes and effects of obedience on the mindset of adolescents

Abdul Ahad Ali

Aleena Irfan

Hassan Javaid

M. Umer Malhi

Talha Omer Butt

Taalia Khan

Introduction to Psychology (SSC 210)

April 4th, 2019

 Table of Contents

1. Abstract (Ahad)………...…………………………………………………3

2. Introduction (Aleena)…………………………………………………..…4

3. Literature Review (Ahad, Aleena, Hassan, Talha, Umer)……...…………6

4. Research Questions (Hassan)…………………………...…..……….…….8

5. Design/Methodology (Talha, Umer)…………………….………………...8

6. Research Tools (Hassan)………………….……………………………….9

7. Analysis of Data and Discussion (Talha, Umer)…………………………10

8. Conclusion (Ahad, Aleena)………………………………...………….….12

9. References

10. Appendix
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Abstract:

This research paper discusses the causes and effects of obedience on the mindset of
adolescents. Obedience can have both positive and negative affects but through this research we
found out that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects. Various factors like; education
of parents, their socioeconomic class, experiences from their past and their genes have an impact
on obedience. Through this research we aim to shed light on how the psychological effects of
obedience are different in Pakistan as compared to Western countries, our primary data is solely
collected from Pakistan while secondary data is being collected from throughout the world. We
found out that all factors written above have an impact on child obedience but their frequency
differs and consequently parents’ genes do have a strong connection with the mental and
physical behavior of a child in his adolescence period. The conclusion is largely based upon the
information collected from questionnaires and an interview.
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Introduction:

The youth of a country play an important role in shaping its future. It is important to
supervise, educate and steer them into the right direction. This process is a joint effort by both
the parents of the child and the compliance to the commands exhibited by the child. Hence to
better construct what lies ahead, it is important to understand the mental processes of
adolescents, and the role parental authority plays in this effort and the obedience to these efforts
by the children themselves.

According to Oxford dictionary, obedience is compliance with commands given by an

authority figure. During the 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist conducted a now
infamous research on obedience. This research showed that humans show a strong tendency to
comply with authority figures. For the family, an adolescent is a child falling under the age
bracket of 10 to 19 years of age for the most part is governed by the authoritative command of
their parents.

To help better understand this dynamic, the role obedience plays on a child should be
considered. Studies show that teenagers, particularly between the ages of 15 to 18 have the
tendency to be more rebellious and crave the power to make life decisions, ranging from daily
decisions concerning the clothes they should wear or the foods they should eat, but also
important life decisions like the college they should go to. This may result in rebellious and
disobedient behaviors resulting in a conflict between self and parental desires.

The type of authority exercised by parents play an important role is dealing with the
issue. Psychologist Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D., recommends that parents remain empathetic during
disagreements, remain calm and provide clear guidance about risky ventures or important
decisions. Furthermore, it is seen that parents who follow a style where input is frequently taken
from the offspring, are more likely is raise young adults who are confident about themselves, as
compared to stricter, more controlling parents whose offspring tend to be more uncertain and
doubtful when expressing their wants.

Some parents believe that a strict authoritarian parenting style will keep a teenager on
track. However, reality shows that harsh punishments often produce bitter teens and make them
want to act out even more. Overly strict and controlling parenting doesn't create better
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

disciplined adults; instead it discourages interactions between parents and teens and damages a
teen's ability to develop self-discipline. Dr. Laura Markham states that by letting everyday
decisions made by teen run their course, teens often learn from their mistakes, and parents should
intervene when the natural consequences are dangerous or destructive and that timely
punishments and natural consequences are better ways to respond to teen disobedience.

It is also found that children tend to exercise greater levels of independence and
autonomy in more developed and literate parts of the world where government facilities and civil
harmony allowed for parents to follow a democratic form of parenting where the child had
greater independence over daily choices as opposed to developing countries where parental
control was much firmer and children showed a more obedient behavior.
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Literature Review:

The article “Level of Authority and Response Cost in the Obedience of Schoolchildren”
(Bernal & Inesta, 2009), explores the obedience amongst school going children in regards to two
different levels of authority (total and partial), as stated by Ribes (2001); as well their impact on
two conditions: one with a response cost and the other without a response cost for disobeying. The
results showed that schoolchildren that were exposed to the figure representing total authority
showed lower rates of disobedience, including total obedience, than those exposed to a partial
authority figure. Furthermore, groups with a total authority figure with a no response cost for
disobedient responses (NRC) showed the greatest level of obedience, and the lowest level was
found amongst a partial authority figure with a response cost condition. It would seem that
whatever the level of authority, response cost favored higher disobedience rates than starting the
treatment with an NRC condition.(Bernal & Inesta, 2009)

According to (Lau, 2016), child independence was more popular in nations with greater
wealth and more highly populations; obedience was more popular in nations with less wealth and
lower percentages of educated and urban populations. Child independence is more adaptive in
urban ecologies where there is a formal schooling system, children are encouraged to indulge in
social activities which would make them confident. In China, lower parental education was
associated with adolescents’ greater sense of duty and obligation to the family (Lau, 2016). This
raises the point that parents’ education also has an impact on the magnitude of child obedience.
This implies that not only the national indicators have an impact on children obeying their parents
but on an individual level parents’ education, social class and income would also predict parents’
endorsements of independence and not obedience.

According to (Glen H. Elder, 1963), the insistence of legitimate power provokes the feeling
of liking and decreases the resistance to the act of matching the behaviors towards a group with
respect to the power agent and his rules. Their research basically answered the question of what
adolescent thinks about: 1. His/her desire to model parents, 2. compliance with parental requests,
and 3. autonomy in problem solving and decision making on three different levels of parental
power. (Glen H. Elder, 1963) The conclusion reached through a structured questionnaire given to
white adolescents living in Ohio and North Carolina showed that adolescents model their parents
more if they are tending to be more democratic rather than being autocratic. Adolescents with
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

democratic parents behave in a similar manner just as their parents did. Adolescents having
democratic parents who give less forceful commands are likely to be confident in their ideas and
opinions and they are also independent in decision making. Whereas the autocratic parents who
give a lot of commands which the adolescents have to obey, decreases their confidence level and
authority to make decisions too. To conclude, adolescent behavior is generally modified by the
level of parental power.

The research ‘Adolescents and Parents conceptions of Parental Authority and Personal
Autonomy’ was conducted by (Smetana & Asquith, 1994) in August 1994. The study looked at
the limits between parental authority and young peoples’ personal jurisdiction. From one
viewpoint, guardians and teenagers were one-sided about guardians' power to manage moral and
ordinary issues. Almost all young people and guardians made a decision about that ethical issues
are authentically subject to parental ward, that ethical tenets are required, and that the misleading
moral issues is autonomous of parental expert. In like manner, most young people and guardians
passed judgment that regular issues are genuinely subject to parental ward and dependent upon
parental expert. However, guardians largely see themselves as having more prominent power over
these issues than did adolescents. (Smetana & Asquith, 1994)

Another research paper (M Byford, 2014) aims to find a link between teenage behavior and
how problems affect their own future parenting behavior. Majority of the individuals who had the
behavior problems were boys attaining low level of education and low cognitive score; while those
with emotional problems were girls again having low cognitive score and expected to have high
level of coercive discipline. Parents having mild behavior problems in teenage were less likely to
give a healthy and an intellectual environment in home. Parents who showed severe emotional
problem were likely to use coercive discipline as parents. These results and previous studies
enabled to get to a conclusion that behavior and emotional problems in teenagers lead to
unfavorable outcomes when these teenagers turn into parents. Those parents who use coercive
discipline with their children have lower cognitive scores and by this they have an adverse effect
on their children’s life (M Byford, 2014)
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Research Questions:

Primary Question:

Q. What are the causes and effects of obedience on the mindset of adolescents?

Secondary Questions:

Q1. Under what circumstances do adolescents exhibit the greatest level of obedience?

Q2. What are the different parental authorities present during adolescence?

Q3. What effect does the different level of parental power have on the autonomy in problem
solving and decision making of the adolescents?

Q4. Do adolescents who exhibit conduct problems likely to develop a coercive style of
parenting in future?

Q5. What affect does socioeconomic class and education of parents have on their parenting
style?

Methodology

In order to collect data for the research, we used both the primary and the secondary forms
of research. In the primary research we had used both qualitative and quantitative methods. We
distributed questionnaire to 50 different people which consisted equal ratio of teenagers and
parents, in order to know the viewpoint of both parties and their take on the effect of obedience on
the mind of adolescents. Close-ended questions were mostly asked in the questionnaire. The
questions had to be designed in such a way in order to establish that they were directed towards
the adolescents. The questionnaires were distributed to children of different schools scattered all
over the city of Lahore; LGS, Beaconhouse, Aitchison, Lacas to be precise. We also conducted a
detailed interview of one of the experienced instructor in Lahore School of Economics Ms. Haadia
Yasir, who believes in the idea that children should be trained and brought up to be obedient. For
the secondary research we have used different online sources such as the JSTOR articles, Google
scholar, Scopus journals. These secondary research articles helped us on variety of aspects e.g. an
article named “Child Independence and Obedience around the world”, by Anna S. Lau helped us
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

to get a better understanding and deeper knowledge of this topic. The research is a quasi-qualitative
study. It required numerical data to explain some technical aspects of the subject. Thus the data
that we collected contains many statistical figures as well as the opinions of the general population.
Citizens of the Lahore had given their own opinions, on the subject, which were taken into
consideration. Studies conducted by other researchers are also briefly explained throughout the
paper.

Research Tools

 50 Questionnaires in LGS, Lacas, Beaconhouse, Aitchison.

 Interview of an experienced teacher and a loving mother.
 Online Websites for stats and figures.
 Online research articles.
 Microsoft Word for compilation, spelling check, grammar.

Research Limitations:

There are many articles about Obedience but not many articles are available, that relate to
the impact of the obedience on the mind of the adolescents. The articles are available but the
country was not that we needed i.e. Pakistan. Thus we also had to consult different magazines and
newspaper articles. The time given to us, for the research was very limited 2 weeks to be exact
which restricted our approach of gathering data from outside the city of Lahore. Keeping in mind
the time restriction and budget constraints we could not target all socio economic classes of
Pakistan. Precisely, our responses are only coming from the population belonging to upper and
upper middle class. Furthermore, honesty becomes a barrier too when it comes to the
questionnaires. People may have filled the questionnaire in a careless manner. Since we
interviewed a female figure so there may be high chance of biasness towards a feminist approach.
Lastly, as far as the methodology is concerned we were not able to use any paid computerized
software for our convenience.
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Analysis and Discussion:

The data that we gathered through the questionnaire helped us answer many different
aspects of our topic. 26 out of 50 respondents were female whereas the remaining 24 were male.
20% of the total respondents were 13-19 years old, 42% were from 20-30 years old and people
aging 30 and above were 38%. 33 out of the 50 respondents did not even know the meaning of the
term “coercive discipline” and the remaining had an idea of what this term means. 52% of the
people who answered the questionnaire think that the children should be obedient and follow all
the commands given to them, 40% were not sure of whether the children should always be obedient
and follow each and every command given to them. Only 8% of the people were not in favor of
the idea of children obeying the orders. According to the 76% of the 50 respondents, there is a
positive effect on the mind and behavior of the adolescents when they obey their parents whereas
24% feel that obeying commands by the children don’t have any effect on the mind of the
adolescent. 46% of the people think that if parents are educated, they would not expect their
children to listen to everything they say while the 20% people don’t think so and the remaining
34% were not sure. 56% of the sample say that the class does not have an impact on child’s
obedience followed by 36% people who believe that the children of the upper middle class are
obedient. According to the 84% of the sample population adolescents who are brought up in an
upper class family are stubborn in nature when compared with the rest of the classes. The 72% of
the total people believed that fulfilling all the wishes of the children spoils them, making them
stubborn whereas the 14% believe that the most important factor which spoils the child is the low
involvement of parents in child’s life. 88% of the respondents agreed to the fact that in order to
have a positive impact of obedience on one’s mind, the parents’ supervision which is necessary
for adolescents should be partial. Nearly 70% people agreed that there is no need to punish children
in order for them to obey their commands. Young people in the total sample greatly think that the
parents should opt a more democratic style of parenting which would help them in their future.
More than 50% of the people agreed to the statement that the Autocratic parents who give a lot of
commands decreases the confidence level of the adolescent whereas only 2% denied this
statement. Most of the people also agreed that the level of parental power is the factor which causes
the behavior to get modified. A large chunk of population feels that there is a direct connection of
the behavior of adolescents with parent’s genes.
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Moving on to the information that we gathered from an interview, according to Ms. Haadia
Yasir an autocratic style of parenting should be adopted while you teach your child to be obedient
especially when he/she is young. Her parents used an autocratic style in her upbringing. This had
an impact on her mind which made her believe that she has been brought up in the best possible
manner and this is the most suitable style to be followed by parents on their children. Ms. Haadia
believes that girls are relatively more obedient than boys but it also depends largely on the gender
ratio in the house. If there is a single sister of 3 brothers she is likely to be more rough and tough
than other girls and a stricter style would be needed whereas if there is a single brother of 3 sisters
he would be an introvert and a more democratic style can be used. When she was asked about the
connection between genes of parents and behavior of adolescents she responded in a very
contradicting manner. By giving an example of her own daughter who copies her talking style, she
believes that there is a direct connection between genes and behavior of adolescents but in the next
sentence she feels that this should not happen, although this phenomenon is natural but according
to our interviewee, parents must try to fix negative behavior which a child is adopting. According
to Ms. Haadia education plays no role whatsoever in what parenting style is going to be but
occupation of a parent and the socio economic class has an impact on the parenting style. Her
grandmother was not educated whereas she is but both follow the same style of parenting. She
feels that both she and her mother are working women and it has helped them to understand the
world which will aid in better molding their children. She also feels that being a parent is a huge
investment and it is understandable if a parent wants to choose what their child wants to do in the
future. In the end Miss Haadia explained the phenomena that no child would ever want to live
away from their family.
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Impact of Obedience on Adolescents

Conclusion:

In the light of all the research tools, we came to a conclusion, that there is variation to a
large extent between the points we got from the research articles i.e. primary sources and our
secondary sources, but more preference is given to the data collected from Pakistan since that
information is more credible. First of all, The article (Lau, 2016) says that socioeconomic class
and education of parents have an impact on child obedience, if both are high then ideal degree of
obedience would be present but the responses we got from Pakistan says that socioeconomic class
does matter but education of parents does not. Secondly, both sources proves that there is strong
connection between parents’ genetic behavior and child’s conduct. Moving a step forward, it is
concluded that the parents whose parenting style is completely autocratic, their children become
rebellious but on the other hand, if a completely democratic style is adopted, that makes children
stubborn. So an ideal parenting style is a mixture of both autocratic and democratic, this largely
depends upon the situation too. Furthermore, parents must give their children some authority to
take their own decisions, this would not only make children more creative but their critical thinking
skills would also get polished. Teenagers unquestioningly following their parents' every command
teaches them to be passive individuals, this is not healthy for anyone's personal and moral
development. Moreover, it can be concluded that in the West, the idea of teenagers living alone
after they hit eighteen is very absurd, we derived this conclusion from our interview; in the difficult
times it is only the family that can help you. When it comes to the final conclusion, parents are
recommended not become extremists when it comes to parenting, there is always a middle way to
everything, parents and children both should follow that way.