The question of why do good people do bad things start an interesting spark of conversation. It could be the reason why good people could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. It could also be the influence of others on people as they begin to work. Could just a person in a uniform or even a costume change the way other people act around them. Why do people subject into doing things they know that are wrong just because a man dressed as a cop tell them to do so? An authority figure plays a big role on how others acts and why they act that way.
Stanley Milgram is a social psychologist who started an experiment in 1960. Stanley Milgram gathered Germans to prove if they different when it comes to following authority after the destruction
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One reason could be there are a lot of single minded people in the world. Single minded people focus on what they are told to do and do not focus on morals in life. Another reason could be the fact that people are scared to disobey the law to protect themselves. Why would I harm myself when I could harm another and get away with it? That could be the thought of people. If they are told to do something wrong by a police offer to keep themselves from being in trouble, most would do it. The thought of being in trouble, or even going to jail could scare many people. A controlling figure has a powerful affect on the people around them. This could lead to good people doing bad things. Another important reason why good people might do bad things is stress. The heat of the moment could cause someone to do wrong since they do not have a second chance nor a second to think about what to do. Stress can cause people to act different than they normally behave. If a police officer demanded, not asked, you to do something you would automatically do without having a second thought. This could be because the stress from a police telling you to do the wrong thing could make you act differently from your everyday actions. There are many factors on why good people do bad things, but there is not really one specific answer. Most of the
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
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 July of 1961, Stanley Milgram began his experiment of obedience. He first published an article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963. This article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, is what this paper will be critiquing. He then wrote a book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, in 1974 discussing his results in more detail. Milgram’s inspiration was the World War II and Adolf Hitler. During World War II, millions of innocent people were killed in a very organized manor. Milgram (1963) compares the organization and accuracy of the deaths, to the “efficiency as the manufacture of appliances” (p. 371). Milgram (1963) defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose” (p. 371). Milgram acknowledges that it may only take one person to come up with an idea, such as Hitler coming up with a way to eradicate the Jews, but would take an
In his article, he provides excerpts from his experiment to solidify his concepts. For example, Gretchen Brandt continuously askes if the "Student" is ok; however, when the "Experimenter" says to continue, she does so but not without saying she "...doesn 't want to be responsible for anything happening to him" (80). Another example Milgram provides is of a man by the name Fred Prozi. Prozi proceeds through the entire experiment. That is, until he runs out of word pairs. At this point the "Experimenter" urges him to continue. Prozi refuses; yet, when the experimenter claims the responsibility is his and his alone, Prozi continues still full of concern (83). Szegedy-Maszak calls this "routinization", one person having responsibility for one job (76). In Milgram 's case the job was having the responsibility for all outcomes, and urging the "Student" to continue. In response to Milgram 's experiment and others, Saul McLeod, psychology tutor at University of Manchester, writes that the person being ordered around believes the authority will accept the responsibility of the end results. He calls this the "agentic state", when people allow others to push them around and direct all responsibility on to them; therefore, acting as agents for the other person (The Milgram Experiment).
... More people followed their direct orders and continued shocking the learners to the very highest voltage. Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own natural instincts. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world examples, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures.
One of the most famous studies in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram (1963), a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram started his experiments in 1961, shortly after the trial of the World War II criminal Adolph Eichmann had begun. Eichmann’s defense that he was merely following instructions when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews roused Milgram’s interest. Milgram posed the question, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"
Milgram answers the question of why this problem occurred in our pasts, for example during the Holocaust, and still occurs within ourselves. The experiment unfortunately illustrates that it is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only a link in a chain of action in a multifaceted society. People feel is their duty or their job to obey an authority figure without realizing that nobody can make another individual do something they feel is not right.
Humans are constantly pressured to be obedient and abide by rules and orders. Time outs are enforced for children when they act against their parents. Schools have strict guidelines for behavior. When a student acts out, administrators impose immediate consequences. Individuals are conditioned to follow orders through the punishments for poor behavior. Stanley Milgram conducted as social experiment aimed at determining the extent of human obedience to authority figures without being forced to comply. The responsibility of the consequences was transferred to the authority figures. Many subjects delivered shocks with the intensity to kill. They obeyed orders despite their morals. Consequently, in A Few Good Men, Lance Corporal Harold
It is human nature to respect and obey elders or authoritative figures, even when it may result in harm to oneself or others. Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, conducted an experiment to test the reasoning behind a person’s obedience. He uses this experiment in hope to gain a better understanding behind the reason Hitler was so successful in manipulating the Germans along with why their obedience continued on such extreme levels. Milgram conducts a strategy similar to Hitler’s in attempt to test ones obedience. Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist, disagreed with Milgram’s experiment in her article, ”Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of obedience”, Baumrind explains
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 experiences of real life. 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 several cases, folks will set aside their personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group. Group-think influences police officer’s rationalizations for some behaviors by preventing members of the group from reconsidering their beliefs while causing them to ignore warning signs. Group-think tends to occur more in situations where group members are very similar to one another and is more likely to take place when a powerful and charismatic leader commands the group. Situations in which the group is placed under extreme stress or where moral dilemmas exist also increase the occurrence of groupthink (Haberfeld et al.2014,
In this chapter, the author Lauren Slater describes Stanley Milgram and his experiment about obedience to authority.
Stanley Milgram is well known for his work with obedience to authority. His work, “The Perils of Obedience,” studied whether average individuals would obey an authority figure, telling them to do something that harms another individual.
Delatore, J.E. “Character and Cops.” American Enterprise Institute of Public Policy Research. 1989: 65. EBSCOhost. Web. 12 Nov 2013