Which is stronger? Fear or morals? A Few Good Men addresses this issue through the court case of two men who acted under a morally questionable order. Multiple scenes in the movie show this conflict between heart and mind. Psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to test how far the average citizen would be willing to go to follow an order from an authoritative figure. His results contradict intellectual Ian Parker’s conclusion from his own tests of obedience. Both experiments have their own take on the question raised by A Few Good Men: “Do humans obey conflicting orders because of lack of strength to resist or because of a lack of value for others?” Although it is the general opinion that horrific deeds are done by horrific people, …show more content…
The basic experiment consisted of a teacher, a learner, and an administrator. The learner was strapped into a chair and the teacher read him/her words and the learner had to know what word to pair it with. Whenever the learner answered incorrectly, the administrator instructed the teacher to shock the learner with a volt of electricity. As the learner continued to respond inaccurately, the teacher had to execute shocks with higher and higher voltage causing greater and greater pain for the learner. About 60% of all “teachers” obeyed the entire time, giving the highest voltage and most painful shock (Milgram 80). British writer Ian Parker in “Obedience” analyzes Milgram’s life and his experiment. He questions the true purpose of the experiment and wonders if it really tested obedience and morals or situational …show more content…
Milgram addresses how his “teachers” continue to administer shocks of high voltage even as the learner’s discomfort grows as made obvious by yelling and begging for the experiment to be done, and as it proceeds, agonized screams and then silence (Milgram 79). When put into context of A Few Good Men, however, it is obvious that what Dawson and Downey did to Private Santiago, that is tie up and gag him, was not out of sadistic pleasure, but because of an order. Dawson evidently cared about Santiago as he would not let any of the other man lay a hand on him to teach him a lesson. Which again brings up the question of why he did it. In Milgram’s experiment, the teachers continued despite their concern for the learner’s health because the administrator explicitly told them to and said he would assume the responsibility for all consequences. However, when orders were not given face-to-face, but over the telephone, people were much more likely to disobey (Milgram 88). These people were afraid of disappointing the experimenter and how they would appear if they did not fully carry out their task. Was Dawson afraid of disappointing his commander? Are people really that shallow? Milgram seems to think so, but Parker would beg to
As depicted in A Few Good Men, authors Fromm, Dalrymple, and Szegedy-Maszak provide evidence as to why blind obedience influences individuals’ motives, such as fear and trust, to examine how unjust authority pollutes a person’s ability to
A Few Good Men is a prime example of obedience-involved situations throughout the entire film. Specifically, it contains great examples of the relationship of obedience and the sense of entitlement. Entitlement tends to logically come hand and hand with a sense of being above most authority figures, resulting in the lack of obedience towards those figures. Stanley Milgram has examples of this trend in his works in “The Perils of Obedience,” where the test subject tends to feel entitlement, mainly from the experiments “teacher” explaining how the experiment depends on them with how far they are willing to go with the experiment (Milgram 79). An additional popular experiment we can effectively compare A Few Good Men to is the Stanford Prison
In this article “The Pearls of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram asserts that obedience to authority is a common response for many people in today’s society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals. Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a person’s tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts.
The motion picture A Few Good Men challenges the question of why Marines obey their superiors’ orders without hesitation. The film illustrates a story about two Marines, Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey charged for the murder of Private First Class William T. Santiago. Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is known to be lackadaisical and originally considers offering a plea bargain in order to curtail Dawson’s and Downey’s sentence, finds himself fighting for the freedom of the Marines; their argument: they simply followed the orders given for a “Code Red”. The question of why people follow any order given has attracted much speculation from the world of psychology. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted an experiment in which randomly selected students were asked to deliver “shocks” to an unknown subject when he or she answered a question wrong. In his article, “The Perils of Obedience”, Milgram concludes anyone will follow an order with the proviso that it is given by an authoritative figure. Two more psychologists that have been attracted to the question of obedience are Herbert C. Kelman, a professor at Harvard University, and V. Lee Hamilton, a professor at the University of Maryland. In their piece, Kelman and Hamilton discuss the possibilities of why the soldiers of Charlie Company slaughtered innocent old men, women, and children. The Marines from the film obeyed the ordered “Code Red” because of how they were trained, the circumstances that were presented in Guantanamo Bay, and they were simply performing their job.
Stanley Milgram, author of "The Perils of Obedience," conducted an experiment at Yale University to see if average citizens would partake in a study revolving around obedience to authority (Milgram 78). In said experiment, a professor from Yale would give an ordinary individual the authority to shock another person. If the ordinary individual asked to stop, the professor would coax them to continue and remind them they hold no responsibility (78). Not only did Milgram 's study revolve around obedience to authority, it also stressed the point of every person could be capable of torture and doing so without feeling responsible. In the article, "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism," author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak states, anyone can
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.
He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority figures. Milgram is well aware of his audience and organization throughout his article, uses quotes directly from his experiment and connects his research with real world examples to make his article as effective as possible. Stanley Milgram selected 40 college participants, aged 20-50, to take part in the experiment at Yale University. Milgram says, “The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measureable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim” (632). Although the 40 men or women thought that they were in a drawing to see who would be the “teacher” and the “learner,” the drawing was fixed.
Comparative Analysis Obedience to authority and willingness to obey an authority against one’s morals has been a topic of debate for decades. Stanley Milgrim, a Yale psychologist, conducted a study in which his subjects were commanded by a person in authority to initiate lethal shocks to a learner; his experiment is discussed in detail in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgrim 77). Milgrim’s studies are said to be the most “influential and controversial studies of modern psychology” (Levine). While the leaner did not actually receive fatal shocks, an actor pretended to be in extreme pain, and 60 percent of the subjects were fully obedient, despite evidence displaying they believed what they were doing was harming another human being (Milgrim 80). Likewise, Dr. Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, conducted an experiment, explained in his article “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which ten guards were required to keep the prisoners from escape and under control.
In reality, if there is a law, it needs to be enforced. However, a question arises about how the law should be enforced to avoid injustice. The three storylines show how the law is forced, for instance in case of the state of Florida (“Gideon’s Trumpet”), sometimes, however, in the form of abusing power as presented by Angelo (“Measure for Measure”) and Col. Nathan R. Jessep (“A Few Good Men”). Regardless of all the cases of strict enforcement of the law, unfair rules, and abusive behaviors, the role models of the stories were persistent enough to achieve justice and make changes for all.
At first Milgram believed that the idea of obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was appalling. He was not satisfied believing that all humans were like this. Instead, he sought to prove that the obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram staged an artificial laboratory "dungeon" in which ordinary citizens, whom he hired at $4.50 for the experiment, would come down and be required to deliver an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for failing to answer a preset list of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment "is to find the shock level at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to pull the switch" (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of reluctance and doubt within the reader. By this point in the essay, one is probably thinking to themselves, "Not me. I wouldn't pull the switch even once." In actuality, the results of the experiment contradict this forerunning belief.
Dalrymple states that he obeyed his superior because she was more knowledgeable over her job (256). The Milgram experiment demonstrates how ordinary people act towards authority in certain situations. Dalrymple accurately utilizes that point by describing when a boy is turned in for trying to steal a car and then the parents proceed to yell at the guards. The guards began to stop reporting kids because they wanted to avoid the conflict all together (257). Parker agrees with Dalrymple by explicating that the experimenter alludes to conflict when the teacher wants to discontinue the experiment, but stumbles to rebel when dictated to continue (238). Parker’s solution is to offer a button for the teachers to press when they are no longer able to continue the experiment (238).
But I believe I was right, sir. I believe I did my job. And I won 't dishonor myself, my unit, or the Corps, so that I can go home in six months.” (Kaffee, Dawson, and Downey in interrogation room). By saying this, he proves what Zimbardo found in his study: when placed in a social role, young educated men and women are radically transformed to fit that role. Though Dawson appears to have no remorse over what he 's done, we see that he knows what he did was wrong when he says “I never meant to hurt Willy” to Kaffee, Jo, and Sam after he 's been sentenced. Would Dawson and Downey have done what they did to Santiago if they were at home with family? If they had never joined the Marines? Zimbardo 's answer to this would be a definite no. To explain his reasoning, he says “To what extent do we allow ourselves to become imprisoned by docilely accepting the roles others assign us or, indeed, choose to remain prisoners because being passive and dependent frees us from the need to act and be responsible for our actions (117).” Through Zimbardo 's viewpoint, Dawson and Downey were nothing more than ordinary men who were placed in an extreme role and were radically changed to assume that role. Much like how the guards changed in The Stanford Prison Experiment, Dawson and Downey were changed through the pressures of the military, and took the responsibility of the Code Red too
More specifically, the movie A Few Good Men depicts the results of blindly obeying orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, also explores obedience to authority in his essay “ The Perils of Obedience”. On the other hand, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, focused on disobedience to authority in his essay “ Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Milgram wrote about how people were shockingly obedient to authority when they thought they were harming someone else while Fromm dissected both: why people are so prone to obey and how disobedience from authoritative figures can bring beneficial changes for society. Obeying commands, even when they go against our morals, is human nature; Disobeying commands, however, is challenging to do no matter what the situation is.
Introduction Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous, especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to, but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority; for example, the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience, reflecting how this can be destructive in real life experiences. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid, hence useless.
In the film “ A Few Good Men” the rule of law and fundamental justice were not followed by Lance Cpl. Harold and Pfc. Louden Downey. The rule of law was disobeyed as soon as Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden acted above the law. They committed a criminal offence and disregarded Pvt. Santiago's rights. Although, the orders were given by superior officer, Col. Nathan Joseph, the fact of the matter still remains the same, a crime was committed . Pvt. Santiago’s rights were not taken into consideration, which inevitably lead to his death. Although Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden clearly disregarded the rules of law and acted above the law, procedural justice was still exercised. Both Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden were given rights to a fair trial and the