Authority And Obedience In Stanley Milgram's Obey At Any Cost

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If given the task of writing of describing themselves, very few people would put words like sadistic, psychotic and violent. Why then do ordinary people commit acts of extraordinary violence? This is the exact same question asked in the reading “Obey at Any Cost”, which is a detailed account of a study conducted by Yale’s Stanley Milgram. In his study Mr. Milgram wished to scientifically prove the relationship between authority and obedience. The impetus for this study, which was conducted in 1963, were the atrocities committed by humans around the globe, namely those in World War II. Milgram proposed that ordinary people, when confronted with the influence of an authoritative figure, would abandon their moral compass (Hock, 2013). To test …show more content…

Not only did Milgram repeat the study again but recently many such studies, which are usually a variation of Milgram’s study, have taken place. Milgram’s experiment also displays a well-known theory called Agency Theory. Which states that people are more likely to follow an authority when the authority figure is taking responsibility. A simple variation to Milgram’s experiment could be to test what the obedience levels are when participants are told they will have full responsibility for their actions as opposed to when they are told the authoritative will take responsibility. The research also highlighted the fact that often times people will follow a figure of authority even through extreme emotional …show more content…

Through this discussion psychologist can continue to define what is an ethical experiment and what is not. Although Milgram reported that none of his participants had any lasting psychological damage from the study (2013), is it ethical to completely deceive your participants? Perhaps in certain studies deception is needed in order to not compromise the validity of the experiment. One of the key findings of Milgram’s study was that it was the situation not necessarily the figure of authority which made the participants act obediently. I think this could be used for positive purposes such as in sports training to build cohesive and disciplined teams. If coaches can create an environment that makes the players completely obedient to them, it would be vastly easier to manage egos and shape the team in the coach’s

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