Essay #1: Summary and Narrative
“Obedience to Authority”
Rough Draft Due Date:
Final Draft Due Date:
Background: This essay asks you to discuss one of two related forces in society—the pressure to conform to a group and the
pressure to obey authority. As we will discover over the next few weeks, we conform in order to be part of the group, to be a
team player, to be “one of us,” and we obey authority when we confer an institution or an individual the power to make
decisions for us. Both obedience and conformity can be rational and healthy. But the pressure to obey and conform can also
drive us towards behaviors that conflict with our principles.
Task: First, summarize the procedures and findings of either Solomon Asch’s “Opinions and Social Pressure” or Stanley
Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience.” Then in a clear, focused thesis statement, compare a personal experience and what it
taught you about the nature of conformity or obedience to the conclusions of the experiment you summarized. Does your
experience confirm the findings of Asch or Milgram, or contradict them in some significant way? In the body of your essay,
demonstrate your thesis statement with a personal narrative, the story of your experience. Finally, analyze your behavior—
try to figure out why you acted as you did.
Suggested Structure:
I. Introduction (about 250 words): First present a summary on Asch’s or Milgram’s experiment. Assume the reader is not
familiar with the study—include all essential information. If you will be focusing your comparison on a particular facet of the
experiment, you should provide more detail on that facet than on others. For example, if your experience relates to Asch’s
conclusion that an individual will more often break with the group if there is just one other dissenting voice among them,
highlight this aspect of Asch’s experiment in your summary. Conclude this section with the study’s findings.
II. Bridge: Write a paragraph that provides a transition, or bridge, into your narrative. You will need to adapt this paragraph to
your material. Either make a clear connection between Asch’s findings on conformity and your own experience or make a
clear connection between Milgram’s findings on authority and your experience. Explain to the reader how and why the event
you’ll be narrating provides a real-world example of the phenomena Asch or Milgram explored in the laboratory. This
paragraph should conclude with your thesis statement.
III. Thesis Statement: Your thesis should be a 1-2 sentence statement providing a clear, specific comparison of your
experience and the experiment you’ve summarized. Does your experience illustrate or confirm a conclusion of the
experiment? Or does your experience contradict that conclusion, revealing something significantly different about conformity
or obedience that Milgram or Asch missed? An excellent thesis will also explain the significance of this comparison, what of
importance we can learn about conformity or authority based on this comparison.
IV. Body (about 500-1000 words): Demonstrate your thesis by describing a personal experience. If you are comparing your
experience to Asch’s findings, describe an experience in which you, or someone you know, encountered the pressure to
conform to a group. If you are using Milgram as the basis for your comparison, describe an experience in which you were
pressured to obey an order that conflicted with your values and standards of morality. In either case, the outcome of this
experience—whether you obeyed, conformed, or remained independent—and the factors that influenced the outcome—the
size of the group, the manner in which authority was established, etc.—should be illustrative of your comparative thesis
statement. For example, if the thesis states that, in contradiction to Milgram’s findings, your experience demonstrates that
individuals can disobey a clearly established authority in order to save others from harm, your narrative will have to show you,
or someone in the narrative, doing just that. In short, the narrative should show how your experience confirmed or contradicted
Milgram’s or Asch’s findings.
When used for academic or scholarly writing, narrative is often accompanied by explanation and analysis. Note that
Asch and Milgram don’t merely tell the story of their experiment, but interject with explanation and analysis that tells the
reader how the events in the experiments demonstrate their points. Every paragraph or major section of your narrative should
conclude with an explanation of how the event you just narrated confirms your comparative thesis.
Good sources of material for your narrative might be school, work, your family, or your group of friends.
V. Conclusion (about 200-250 words): Why did you act as you did? Analyze the pressures that influenced you, using the ideas
in the essays we have been reading. Quote from them and integrate their views into an analysis of your behavior. You can use
the work of Asch, Milgram, and Zimbardo to aid in your analysis. Fromm’s essay will be particularly useful here, as it
examines the psychological and societal forces that motivate obedience and conformity.
Grading Criteria: 1) A clear, comprehensive summary that focuses on aspects of the experiment relevant to your thesis and
narrative. 2) A bridge paragraph that establishes a connection between your experience and Asch’s or Milgram’s experiment.
3) A thesis statement that provides a clear, compelling comparison of Asch’s or Milgram’s experiment and your experience.
4) A clearly structured narrative, with descriptive detail, that demonstrates your thesis statement. Each paragraph of the
narrative should conclude with explanation of how the narrative confirms your comparative thesis. 5) A conclusion paragraph
that thoughtfully analyzes your behavior. 6) Sentence clarity and correctness. 7) Proper MLA citation / Works Cited. 8) At
least two well-integrated quotations. 9) Originality, creativity, thoughtfulness.
Length: 1000-1500 words, approximately 4-6 pages.