Milgram's Studies Of Obedience Essay

There may be several diverse reasons that a person or group may obey clearly immoral commands. Perhaps the most widely known experiment investigating compliance are Milgram’s studies of obedience. Milgram was inspired by the 1961 trial of a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. “In the experiment, ordinary people were willing to obey the dictates of an external authority even to the extent of inflicting what they believed were serious and even dangerous shocks to other supposed participants”.
Prior to the experiment, experts believed that only 10% of individuals would exceed 180 volts. In reality, 100% of individuals exceeded 215 volts, 62.5% went to full voltage. People use the behaviours and attitudes of others to guide their own actions and judgments to help them

By following others practices one may diffuse responsibility from themselves; “Befehl ist Befehl’’ (orders ae orders). This can be used as justification for following any immoral commands and may be seen in the “Nuremburg defense” at the Nuremburg trials in 1945/6 and in many psychological experiments thereafter. From Milgram’s experiment, its replications and other similar experimentation social psychologists have derived two broad categories under which the factors which influence people’s decisions are labelled; Contextual factors and Group-related factors.
Contextual factors: A large contributing factor to this obedience in lieu of ones own moral principles and ethical values is the authority of the figure giving the commands, whether this authority be tangible or perceived. People have a propensity to obey orders from a figure of authority. The authority seen in Milgram’s experiment may be seen in what is known as the ‘authority of the situation’. The original experiment was carried out in the grounds of the ivy league Yale University. The term Ivy League has connotations of academic excellence and selectivity in