Obedience to Teacher’s Authority in a Condition of Previous Arousing or Reducing an Individual Feeling of Power

The article presents the issue of obedience and disobedience, referring to Stanley Milgram’s research paradigm and the more recent models and observations gathered around this issue. Special attention is paid to the importance attributed to disobedience and its relationship with obedience. According to different authors it allows to see more broadly the mechanisms both of these processes than one-sided description each of them. First of all it shows also the role of the individual’s sense of power in shaping these processes. In the context of the theories author presents the course and results of an experiment. The experiment was devoted to the role of sense of power in determining students obedience toward the commands of the formal teacher’s authority. Project of research was based on a model of power as an approach-inhibition system by D. Keltner, D.H. Gruenfeld and C. Anderson. A part of undergraduates who participated in this study have been inducted in the sense of power, the second part have been reduced. Then checked whether and how long the persons from both groups comply with a groundless and an unreasonable teacher’s command. Hypotheses were confirmed. The results of the experiment are discussed.