The Milgram Experiment: Effective Or Indecisive Disobedience?

Indecisive disobedience occurs when the individuals in the experiment try to disobey in different ways, but they were ineffective at it. I believe that the Milgram experiment was more about indecisive disobedience, rather than destructive obedience. The subjects of Milgram’s experiment were consciously aware that what they were doing was wrong, since it brought great pain to the “learner,” but because they were instructed by a legitimate authority to continue the experience, they obeyed the experimenter. Another factor was that the experimenter did not show any concern towards the learner nor did they show emotions when the learner screamed and pleaded to end the pain. However, the subjects did experience agony and guilt as well when they were forced to continue generating the shocks to the
The ability to disobey toxic orders is a skill that can be taught like any other—all a person needs to learn is what to say and how to say it,” (Romm 2015). I believe that people like Adolf Eichmann, as well as participants in the Milgram and Stanford experiments, are not immoral. They were probably not aware that they were a sufficient contribution to science because there was a lot of deception involved. However, there are some people that believe that their “wrong actions” are “right.” For example, some Nazis believed that the Jewish deserved the “final solution.” According to Shermer (2012), “Human moral nature includes a propensity to be empathetic, kind and good to our fellow kin and group members, plus an inclination to be xenophobic, cruel and evil to tribal others. The shock experiments reveal not blind obedience but conflicting moral tendencies that lie deep within.” The evidence from the source provided suggests that it could be possible that it is not only the social situation that we are placed in that affects our behavior, but it could also be