Emotions affect our decisions. In fact scientists have found that without emotions we become completely ineffective at making decisions. Research shows that emotions impact teamwork. Which shows that emotional intelligence is one of the strongest predictors of success during work. Studies show that the biggest problems often arise when team decisions and emotions collide. Decision making needs emotions, to help broaden the motivation of the team, search for other alternatives, and to find the best solution. But a little too much emotion is generally bad, even if it seems productive or helpful. When an entire team is feeling curious, excited, or confident it seems to overpower their sense of reason. So how much do our emotions ultimately affect our reactions towards authority? When working as a team to make an important decision it’s important to be aware of how the emotional state of you, and the people around affect the decision process, which is especially critical when emotions are high and there is a tough decision on the line. This also plays a role in how people react towards authority under pressure. Our behaviors often change to match the behaviors around us, sometimes more than we recognize. Sometimes we are directed by a more powerful person to do something we might not want to do. Researchers who study obedience want to see how people react when given an order from someone in a position of authority. Obedience is important. We learn when we are little kids to always obey and respect our parents, teachers, and coaches. It’s also crucial to follow instructions from police officers, firefighters, and judges. And most importantly, a military would not be able to function if the soldiers didn’t obey the orders from their superiors. The movie Eye In The Sky is a great way to understand obedience in the military and how emotions affect how people react towards authority.
Throughout this morality tale of modern warfare, The story is focused on a planned British-run multinational mission to capture a group of high value Al-Shabaab terrorists, who have gathered in Kenya. Elements from the movie force a change in the mission from trying to capture the terrorists to targeting the house they are in to kill them. The ultimate question at the heart of the movie is whether or not killing a group of terrorists, who are about to set off a deadly suicide attack, justifies taking the life of an innocent little girl who has set up a stand to sell bread outside the house they are targeting. The movie shows how long and difficult of a process it is to get everyone to agree on ordering the hell fire. This shows how emotions impact teamwork. Once everyone agrees on the hell fire, it’s up to the pilot to make the final decision. The unexperienced pilots emotions overpower him and he tells his superior to re run the CDE. The teams decision has collided with emotions causing a delay in the hell fire. They try to buy the girls bread to get her out of the way but by the time the second CDE came back, the pilot had to make the tough and heartbreaking decision to unleash hell fire upon the terrorists. The little girl and her parents both ended up being affected by the explosion, but that’s nothing compared to the numbers of people the terrorists would’ve killed if they decided not to order hell fire. At the end of the movie the pilot gets told to go home and get some rest because he has to be back in 12 hours. Obedience in the military is different than obedience towards your parents and teachers. Psychology research shows our personal moral courage is a lot more uncertain than we think. It’s especially hard when when our morals come into conflict with figures of authority. Military recruits are taught from day one the value of instant obedience towards orders, but that doesn’t mean their morals change. It takes experience and strength to be able to put your emotions aside and make a decision as destructive as this. “Never tell a soldier he doesn’t know the cost of war.” The Colonel at the Pentagon knows what will happen if they don’t stop the terrorists while they can. He feels guilty of what will happen to the little girl but doesn’t let his emotions and guilt get in the way of his decision.
There was the other side of obedience that led to some of the most controversial and famous research in history. Stanley Milgram just couldn’t seem to wrap his head around why so many German citizens went along with the brutality of the Nazi leaders during the holocaust. In hopes of understanding this obedience a little more, Milgram conducted a series of investigations. This experiment recruited men from around the Yale University area where the research was fulfilled. Obeying orders from authority can lead to bad behavior. The participants of this study experienced a painful electric shock in what was believed to be a learning experiment. Despite the protests from the person receiving the shocks, most participants continued to experiment. This experiment raised questions such as the power of blind obedience in inexcusable situations. People were also concerned about the ethics all treatment of the participants in all psychological experiments