Obey at Any Cost

281 Words2 Pages
“Obey at any cost?” By Milgram The article “Obey at any cost”, by Milgram (1963) describes how humans have a tendency to obey other people who are in position of authority over them even if, in obeying, they violate their personal codes of moral and ethical behavior. Milgram believed that in some situations, the human tendency to obey is so deeply ingrained and powerful that it cancels out a person’s ability to behave morally, ethically, or even sympathetically. During his procedure he used 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50. 15 of them were skilled or unskilled, 16 were white-collar sales, and 9 were professional. They gave each contestant $4.50, which was a lot in 1963. They added in a confederate who is a 47 year old accountant, and an actor who wore a grey lab coat. The instrument used to “scare” the contestants was a scary-looking shock generator that went to a very high voltage. “’We didn’t need Milgram to tell us we have a tendency to obey orders. What we don’t know before Milgrams experiment’s is just how powerful the tendency is. And having been enlightened about our extreme readiness to obey authorities, we can try to take steps to guard ourselves against unwelcome or reprehensible command’(p.73)”’. This just shows that people don’t realize the effect of obedience from people from a higher authority. With Milgrams experiment there were many problems, consisting of the biases parts like the environment. The laboratory was an unfamiliar environment for the participants, and they may have felt embarrassed. With these circumstances, this experiment is invalid due to all the different possibilities that can
Open Document