Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment

Moral standards are an integral aspect of human rationalization in bringing control and order into our daily situational encounters. These ethical and moral standards are learned and ingrained early in childhood, they have internalized with ourselves as our moral compass. These internalized moral rules and ethical principles dictate the outcome of the decisions we encounter on a daily basis. Situationally dependent, the outcomes can lean towards successfully correct decisions or a drastic failures to abide by our moral standards. Regardless of the situations we all have the potential to commit immoral actions, given the right circumstances. Some kind of form of morality is present and valued by all societies around the world in different ways. Within each society, individuals are raised with and inherit a specific set of moral codes and rules that are

These situational factors fog the individual’s awareness that their behavior violates their moral principles. Psychologist Stanley Milgram’ s obedience experiment is an excellent example of the potential effects situational factors have on moral action. In his experiment, a participant was ordered to shock another when incorrect answers to questions were given. Milgram wanted to see how far people would obey commands to progressively increase the shock to dangerous levels. The disposition of the his results were that about 65% of the participants in the experiment obeyed immoral orders to shock another up to the dangerous maximum threshold level of 450 volts. Many of the participants claimed that they disliked shocking the other person but that they felt obliged to abide the orders given by the person in the position of authority. Rather than perceiving their actions as immoral, they relinquished guilt and responsibility to the figure in the position of power giving the unjust or immoral