The Perils of Obedience

Introduction

Obedience is a quality embedded in every person. There is always someone, an authoritative figure, in a person's life that he/she obeys. Stanley Milgram, a Yale University's psychologist in 1963, examined the relationship between the authority and obedience, by various experiments. In the article, titled “The Perils of Obedience”, the Yale Psychologist and author Stanley Milgram study the authoritative subject's influence on an individual's actions. The experimenter provides the reader with a graphic and detailed summary of the procedure of his experiment, which involves a “teacher” receiving commands to inflict pain on a learner (subject), while using the support of some peculiar case. As a whole, author did provide many rational points in support of his argument. Dr. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist is one of the critics who reviewed the results of Milgram's experiments.

Thesis Statement

Assessing the authoritative subject's influence on an individual's actions through experiments.

Plan Statement

The paper will discuss the following main areas of obedience;

a.Obligation for obeying

b.Obedience vs. Conscience

c.Morality and Human ethics

Discussion

As a child, our elders teach us the importance of being obedience. In some cases, young children come into the scope for obedience, also punished for noncompliance to the orders. For most of us, being obedient reflects a sense of pride and, accomplishment, but it is not the case when certain orders of the authority, to be obeyed, and they violate an individual's moral beliefs. In 1963, Stanley Milgram opted to measure the willingness of participating individuals to obey an authoritative figure who ordered them to act against their personal conscience. The experimenter, Milgram, published the experiment results in an article “The Perils of Obedience.” The results were shocking, and they also showed that we are living in a society where human obedience is beginning to override human ethics. These results produced much controversy, as people were uncomfortable with the thinking that people are capable of doing inhumane acts just to show obedience, but many also questioned the validity and morality of obedience study conducted by Milgram (Miller, pp. 45-68). Dr. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist is one of the critics who reviewed Milgram's experiments, and publish her review in the shape of an article.

Obligation for Obeying

Milgram study of obedience deals with the experiment in which the object was given an electric shock and his obedience level was evaluated. The obedience was checked by gradually increasing the electric shocks. But we cannot say that the obedience ...