Question

In the Milgram Obedience Study, a part of why there was so much obedience to authority was because of the trust the participant had in the Experiment. Give 3 reasons why they trusted him so much.

Answer 1

Though there was an element of hurting another person, most subjects in the famous milgram experiment were seen to obey the commands of the experimenter and go on doing their job which were assumably hurting someone else. There may be some reasons because of which these participants trusted Milgram or the experimenter and these are:

• Credibility of Milgram made him being perceived as an authoritative and omnipotent figure and credibility leads to persuasion and trust.
• The participants were not responsible for the pain caused by the shocks as it was all on the experimenter and the subjects getting the shocks were also unknown. These lack of responsibility and neutral subjects also helped the participants in maintaining trust on the experimenter.
• The participants also kept trust because of conformity. As other participants were also doing the same, thus, every participant ended up inducing a shared trust for Milgram on others. Thus, all went on trusting him because of conformity and imitation.

These three are the main reasons behind the maintenance of trust on Milgram by the participants in the experiment.