The Perils Of Obedience Rhetorical Analysis

7 October 2013
Synthesis Over Obedience In this chapter on the research of obedience, studying the psychological actions and reactions, the implications brought forth are the surprising effects of simple commands and the subliminal influence. The articles “The Perils of Obedience”, by Stanley Milgram, and “Opinions and Social Pressure”, by Solomon E. Asch, both exhibit the traits of simple, ordinary test subjects following orders and actions by someone who is illustrated to have power or the general consensus but realistically do not. In the article, “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram, the experiment consist of two subjects, the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ but without the other subject knowing, the other is an actor. In the beginning deciding who would be the learner and who would be the teacher, the actor always got the learner and the real test subject got the teacher (Milgram 78).
If the learner got a question wrong, he would get an electric shock, but he would fake the pain to trick the teacher into believing that he or she is inflicting pain. The purpose of the experiment was to determine how long the subject would continue with the simple order to “continue please” and administer the fake electric shock knowingly causing pain to the actor (Milgram 82).
In the other article, “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon E.
Asch, this experiment studies the subliminal effects of the popular consensus. Within the test, a group of subjects, where only one of them was the actual test subject, tested to see if the test subject would cave into peer pressure choosing to go with the popular consensus and pick a wrong answer (Asch 144).
The subjects in the experiment would be the last ones to openly state their opinion on a series of questions to pick out of a group of lines on a card to determine which one is the longest. On several occasions, the popular consensus was told to choose an incorrect line and the last subject to answer, who is the real test subject, was to decide whether or not to go with his personal opinion and usually the correct answer or go with the popular consensus and choose a wrong answer. 36.8% of the subjects choose to go with the popular consensus and when asked why after the experiment is was because of the pressure of going against the popular decision (Asch 144).
Assuming the knowledge of all of the information in “The Perils of Obedience” , nowhere in the article does it state that the person “in power” threatens or bribes the subjects in any manner swaying the decisions one way or the other. The only thing that is remotely considered to be force used on the making decision would be to, “Continue, please”, with a monotone and asking politely, not forcibly at all (Milgram 81). Knowing that information, this allows us to conclude that the subject placed within his or her mind that there was some sort of power within the “Experimenter”’s position (Milgram 79).
Switching now to the “Opinions and Social Pressure” article, the experiment, like the Milgram article, has several actors and only one real test subject. The experiment test the subjects willingness to the conformity and the caving into the peer pressure effects on a subjects decisions and mental thinking. Many of the test subjects reported to saying, “not to spoil the results”, and normally thinking, “I am wrong, they are right.”, when asked how they reached a decision (Asch 144). The test subjects knew the correct answer, but felt pressured to agree with the popular consensus in fear of resentment, even though there was no real pressure at all.
As you can tell with both these articles, they both illustrate the automatic assumption that there is someone else in charge with power over them, but in reality there is nothing controlling them. The two articles do, however, tell of methods commonly demonstrated in society that each individual is following without realizing it.
The commonly warned method, peer pressure, is seen and expressed,but not realized, everyday.
The conformity in to society by everyone’s choices is engraved in the mind to fit in and to not disturb the status quo, such as clothing styles, behaviors, and personality traits are categorized into “cliques”. Within “Opinions and Social Pressure”, it is seen that against the better judgment of the subject, he/she still went along the popular consensus choosing the incorrect answer (Asch 144). Knowing this, it allows for us to conclude that peer pressure is shown to be more convincing than we can resist despite our best
efforts.
The other method expressed in the article, “The Perils of Obedience”, is subconsciously placing power onto a figure that realistically holds no real power. In every experiment, the “teacher” placed power onto the “experimenter” and when a command was given by said “experimenter”, the “teacher” naturally assumed there would be disappointment or some type of punishment for disobeying the command (Milgram 86).This test concludes that psychologically, the test subjects were concerned about judgements made onto them and didn’t want to disrespect the other person who, in their mind, was of a higher status.
Not only did these experiments conclude that people are more susceptible than we had once thought, but we are vulnerable in more than one way and willing out of our way to conform and to be followers. Milgram demonstrated that people are subconsciously associating people to controlling positions to be subjects willing to follow. In Asch 's article, he illustrated that people are willing to risk being incorrect and failing just to fit in and conform. These two experiments illuminated that people will follow and conform at any cost despite personal interests.

Works Cited
Asch, Solomon E. “Opinions and Social Pressure” WRAC 2nd ed. Christine Farris and Deanna Jessup Compilers. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 143-147. Print.
Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Obedience”, WRAC 2nd ed. Christine Farris and Deanna Jessup Compilers. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 77-89 Print.