In the wake of Adolf Eichmann’s prosecution for commanding the slaying of over 1 million Jews, Psychologist Stanley Milgram called the role of authority into question. What would propel such evil acts from a seemingly normal man? In spite of what top psychologists assumed the outcome would be, the results were astounding. Despite the deep rooted convictions of the subjects opposed to causing physical harm to others, obedience to authority overcame the majority of the time (The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram)
According to Milgram in his famous writing, The Perils of Obedience,
“Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers.”
Stanley Milgram desired to see beyond the man at the
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They are proud of doing a good job, obeying the experimenter under difficult circumstances. “(The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram)
Milgram did the experiment in 18 different settings to see if there was any change to the outcome. He changed the setting from the laboratory at Yale University and moved it to a bleak basement. The results showed that people were less inclined to obey if the setting of the experiment did not look professional. Another variation he tried was having the experimenter push the switch instead of the teacher, and the obedience rose from 65% to a notable 92.5%. This suggests that the more a person enters into an agentic state, the less responsibility they feel for the situation.
Milgram’s experiments continue to beg the question of the power of conscience and will over the power of obedience. Are humans more inclined to obey authority even if it causes harm to others? As we have seen through the scope of this experiment, even when an individual has deep rooted convictions, obedience to authority still overcomes the majority of the