The Influence Of Obedience In A Few Good Men

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Obedience is a widely debated topic today with many different standpoints from various brilliant psychologists. Studying obedience is still important today to attempt to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre happened so society can learn from them and not repeat history. There are many factors that contribute to obedience including situation and authority. The film A Few Good Men, through a military court case, shows how anyone can fall under the influence of authority and become completely obedient to conform to the roles that they have been assigned. A Few Good Men demonstrates how authority figures can control others and influence them into persuading them to perform a task considered immoral or unethical. The most obvious …show more content…

The two Marines did not understand why they were charged with his murder, claiming, “We didn’t do anything wrong.” They claimed that they were only following orders from a superior. To explain the Marines’ behaviors, Milgram would argue that the Marines fell to the pressures of authority. In the article “The Perils of Obedience,” Milgram tests the psychological affects on the “teacher” rather than on the “learner” (Milgram 78) About two-thirds of the test subjects were completely obedient and used the 450-volt shocks, and all of the participants used the painful 300-volt shock (Milgram 80). With these surprising results, Milgram deducts that many of these test subjects carried out these actions because of the authority figure in the room. Coming to a final conclusion, Milgram states that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (Milgram 86). Obedience to authority is ingrained in children from the day they are born, and they are raised to be obedient and this is why many people are obedient. With Milgram’s conclusion, it would be logical to assume that he would argue that the influence of authority is why Dawson and

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