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Milgram's Justification Of Obedience To Authority

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Voluminous research has been conducted in the area of obedience, more specifically how obedient individuals will be in obeying an authority figure even if the authority figure is commanding them to inflict harm or pain onto others. Ordinary people, for many years have inflicted pain onto others under the commands of an authority figure such as during the Holocaust. Probably, the most famous psychological piece of research investigating obedience was that of Milgram (1963). Milgram recruited ordinary males from different backgrounds and occupations, he then created a scenario where the participants were required to follow instructions from a perceived authority figure. These instructions insisted the participants to administer electric shocks …show more content…

Nicholson (2011) drew on valuable records from both the participants of the 1963 study and Milgram. The material drew upon by Nicholson suggested that Milgram misrepresented both the extent at which the participants were debriefed, and the risk the experiments posed, also the harm suffered by the participants. On top of those findings, the records implied that Milgram had qualms about the scientific value of the research, thus compromising his primary ethical justification for the study in the …show more content…

Justifying the My Lai disaster and the Holocaust down to the theory of obedience by subordinates simply following orders from an authority figure are far too facile. It’s shallow to think that just because an authority figure orders another person to kill another being, they will do it simply due to obedient tendencies. Individual differences will always be present and therefore obedience will constantly differ from person to person. Furthermore obedience is not a sound entity, disobedience also exists and has been shown in several psychological studies. In conclusion there is certain studies that do generally support the claim that individuals will blindly conform or obey commands from an authority figure, even when this involves inflicting harm on others, but it’s not possible to attribute the rationale of obedience to justify people inflicting harm or pain upon another being

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