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Summary Of Conformity And The Milgram Shock Experiments On Obedience

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Introduction Although we live in a time when we consider ourselves to be civilized human beings who value life and peace, acts of evil occur. Wars are waged and murders are committed every day. The aim of this paper is to explore and recognize what contributed to the atrocities and inflictions of pain that were committed by individuals, many of whom seemed like normal people with families and home lives. Asch’s experiments researched conformity and compliance, when one changes their behaviors to align with the beliefs of a group. Milgram’s studies observed conditions that fostered obedience and contribute to the development of the agentic state theory, one’s tendency to rationalize that responsibilities and blame lie on the authority figure. In order to understand why people inflict pain upon …show more content…

This paper focuses on the findings from the Asch Experiments on conformity and the Milgram Shock Experiments on obedience to answer the question, “how can theories of conformity and the agentic state be used to explain to an individual’s obedience in regards to the infliction of harm upon others.” Through the investigation of this topic, we may be able to understand the thinking and situation of people, such as murderer Nazi SS officers, and be able to promote a society that prevents further atrocities from occurring. Agentic State Theory The Milgram Shock Experiments The Milgram Shock experiments conducted at Yale University in the 1960s were a controversial set of studies formed to observe how

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