In Cold Blood And The Milgram Experiment

This Milgram research on respect to authority figures was a series of cultural science experiments conducted by Yale University scientist Stanley Milgram in 1961. They assessed the willingness of survey participants, men from a different variety of jobs with varying degrees of training, to obey the authority figure who taught them to do acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to think that they were helping an unrelated research, in which they had to distribute electrical shocks to the individual. These fake electrical shocks gradually increased to grades that could have been deadly had they been true. McLeod's article about the Milgram experiment exposed the fact that a high percentage of ordinary people will

In Capote’s In Cold Blood the readers see Perry fall to Dick’s murder tendencies even though he knows it's wrong. Perry follows the order of Dick to kill Mr. Clutter even though Perry didn't want to kill anyone. “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat” (Capote 244). Perry was lost and frustrated and Dick knew this and Perry trusted him which causes him to vulgarly kill innocent Mr.Clutter even though Perry claims to like Mr. Clutter. In Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Cialdini makes the point that we frequently defer to authoritative figures, even in dire situations, because doing so has almost always been advantageous for us. Cialidni goes on to talk about how in general, authority figures do provide helpful guidance and knowing whether to follow authority orders or ignore them is the real trick. Cialdini proposes the fact that we should ask ourselves 2 questions to see if we should really follow the orders of our authority. “Is the authority truly an expert” (Cialdini 232) this draws attention to the authorities qualifications and their applicability to the subject at hand.“How truthful can we expect the expert to be here” (Cialdini 232) We should be cautious of their motives. In Capote’s In Cold Blood the reader sees how Perry blindly follows the orders of someone he trusts even though that means he had to kill someone. In Cialdini’s Influence: The psychology of persuasion Cialdini mentions the point that we frequently defer to authoritative figures, even in dire situations, because doing so has almost always been advantageous for us. As Cialdini acknowledges this point he also explains to the readers how to