Obedience to Authority

Author: Stanley Milgram

Comments: Zach

Summary:

Milgram's book focused on his controversial experiment and the obedience of the human subjects that were a part of the experiment. The experiment consisted of a subject that would shock another subject, or victim, if they answered a question incorrectly. There were different scenarios of this experiment in order to see how obedient a person would be to authority. Most people will follow the experimenter in a situation whenever they believe that the experimenter has authority. Even if the person in the experiment feels that they are doing something morally wrong they will continue to go on with experiment instead of disobey the perceived authority of the experimenter. When a subject was in close proximity of the person in which they were shocking they still followed the orders of the experimenter because they claimed that they had lowered the status of the victim in their mind. If the scenario changed to where a "normal person" would be giving the orders and the experimenter turned into the victim the subject would still listen to the experimenter and stop shocking them. This shows that the authority of the experimented has some sort of credibility. If the scenario changed to where the experimenter was not in the room the subject didn't feel it necessary to shock at high levels. They also didn't feel responsible for their actions whenever the experimenter was there because they were only following orders and therefore the experimenter is the one who had all the responsibility. It's interesting to see how people change their mind about something whenever they "get caught". The last observation made in the experiments was when the the subject was given a choice in order to shock they continued to shock at the lower levels. This was interpreted to the subject not taking out their aggression with high levels but instead just following the authority they believed the experimenter had.

Discussion:

I think this book was an interesting read and we got a more in depth view than we did when we read the one chapter in Opening Skinner's Box. It's interesting to think that people will listen to someone they believe to have authority even if they don't and how hard it is to break that perceived authority so that they can "be free". It's also a very scary thing to think about because there could be some people who are intimidating enough to feel like they have authority, yet really be someone who's intentions are illegal.