Stanley Milgram's Obedience To Authority Study

Over the past century, the field of Psychology has prospered, giving way to a more in depth knowledge and understanding of people’s social interactions with one another and what drives those connections. 20th century psychologist, Stanley Milgram, executed a series of Obedience to Authority test on random participants. As seen in the YouTube videos online and in class, Milgram’s study found that over 65% of the participants carried out the experiment, despite potentially hurting someone, due to the authority figure urging them to continue.
This poses the question as to why humans are so prone to conform to situations. Social influence can be defined as a groups indirect or direct influence over another person’s decisions and behavior (Bernstein, 2014, 563). This is extremely important concept in correlation to this topic. We discussed in class that Milgram’s prompting question for this experiment was: How did the Holocaust occur? Many would say, “Well, because Hitler was a bad man.” However, Milgram realized the situation ran deeper than that, because Hitler could not commit mass genocide on his own. Instead, his used his authority to persuade Germans to take arms against Jews, relying on their desire to conform and comply (Bernstein, 2014, 564).
Also, obedience to authority is also seen in the high school social pyramid. When you are subjected
to seeing the same faces over and over for years on end, you see crowds begin to form, putting those most liked at the top. Especially with teenagers, people thrive on fitting in and finding their place. Therefore, you try to please those who have higher social influences and connections. Similar to the person giving the shock in the name of science, people continuously allow themselves to be degraded or put in stressful situations in order to be accepted by those who are liked by everyone. This can cause a mental strain on the person under pressure, perhaps even causing them to lose weight rapidly, or create an eating disorder, to be considered worthy to other people. Again, the popular crowd does not have a direct action in this case, but their status and what they offer influences the mentality of someone wanting to be a part of the crowd.
Personally, I am unsure as to how I would have performed in Milgram’s experiment. My stubborn side wishes to believe that I would have been strong willed and stopped the tests. However, my rational side is taking in to account that I do not like to disobey authority and become anxious when facing a dilemma, especially one of this magnitude.
In conclusion, experiments we discussed in class, such as Ash’s and Milgram’s present outstanding examples of people conforming to social influences.
However, in Milgram’s experiment, people complied due to the authority figure urging them to continue and appealing to their sense of responsibility. However, this has caused many of the participants to reflect in quiet horror that they were willing to harm another by executing up to 450 volts of electricity. It is a dreadful thing to realize that humans can be so easily manipulated to participate in heinous acts, causing us to take a second look on where we stand
morally.