obedience.

Acting according to instructions or commands from a person or institution regarded as having authority.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• obedience to authority
• demand for obedience

On the page

The experiment examined obedience to authority under carefully limited conditions.

The demand for obedience left little room for the workers to question the instruction.

Usage notes

Primary category: psychology / character / human behavior. Forms: Usually uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: characterization, motivation analysis, behavioral comparison, qualification. Disciplines: psychology, social behavior, character writing. Commonness: common.