Question

Summarize Milgram’s Obedience Study. In what ways do you see both obedience and conformity? If you were part of this study, would you continue to give the shocks? Why/Why not?

Answer 1

Stanley Milgram conducted his research on the concept of obedience to someone in authority during the time of the Nazi War. When the results of his experimental research confirmed that more than 65% of individuals succumbed to obeying another person in authority, it became a general notion that 'people are likely to do what they were told to do by a person in a position of authority'. However, recently there are various reasons suggested by psychologists for the participants conforming to an authority figure. Firstly, the subject obeyed to the person in authority because he thought of the experimenter to be an 'expert' and assumed he would be knowing what he is doing and thus did not think twice before obeying his instructions. The other possible reason behind obeying is that, the subject trusted the person in authority and did not think that it would do any harm to another person receiving dangerous shocks.

If I were a part of the study, perhaps I would have conformed too. It is rare that people refuse to conform to somebody in authority. We feel like they are people in power and that they must know what they are asking us to do. Thus, I perhaps would have continued to do it.