Why We Obey: From Animal Dominance to Affective Coherence

This article presents a novel affective-cognitive model of obedience based on telotopic negentropy, a measure of emotional alignment toward a situational telos. Departing from institutional or rational-choice theories, we conceptualize obedience as the vectorial convergence of affective forces, including both approach-oriented (conative) and avoidance-oriented (inhibitory) dynamics.Drawing from ethology, symbolic violence theory, game theory, and affective neuroscience, we trace the evolution of obedience from animal hierarchies to human systems of internalized authority. Through repeated interactions and normative reinforcement, affective vectors become aligned with shared goals, generating a stable emotional field.The model formalizes this alignment using angular projections of emotional forces, quantified by their coherence with the telos. A simulation illustrates how varying degrees of affective alignment predict obedient behavior, ranging from mechanical compliance to genuine convergence.We discuss implications for political theory, social cohesion, and artificial systems of command. Obedience, we argue, emerges not merely from power or rationality, but from affective structure—a coherent emotional orientation toward a legitimized directive.