The Obedience To Authority Experiment Of Stanley

Submission to Authority The life of every human being starts in the womb of his mother. Ever since his birth, he is being fed and nourished to play a role in society. The individual receives knowledge for the mind, food and water for the body, and emotion for the heart. Growing up, we have been programmed to follow authority. We can relate this to the relationship that exists between a child and a mother. Naturally, the child obeys the orders of the mother because he respects her right of command. We can say that most of the societies in our era work the same way. Granted, this could lead to a great society, or the exact opposite. But, what is a “good society”, and what does it need? “The Obedience to Authority Experiment of Stanley …show more content…
Milgram recruited 40 males all between the ages of 20 and 50 years old. They were paid to be part of this test and were told that they would be part of an experiment that studies “learning”. In reality, the experiment was all about studying their behavior towards following orders. Before the start of the experiment, each of the volunteers were introduced by the “experimenter” a man named “Mr. Wallace”. The volunteers where made aware that Mr. Wallace had heart condition. After that, they were given either the role of a “learner”/”student”, or a “teacher”. The interesting fact is that “Mr. Wallace” was actually a researcher and he always had the role of the student, which was obviously entirely planned out. The subjects were completely unaware of this. Afterwards, the “learner” was strapped to a chair and asked questions by the “teacher”. The teacher would name pairs of words to Mr. Wallace and test him by repeating one of those words. The learning would then try to recall its coupling word out of 4 other words given to him. If he gets it wrong, the teacher will be told to give him an electric chock. As the learner pairs more words incorrectly, the teacher is told to increase the power of the shock. Before the experiment begun, the teacher was given a shock with the lowest intensity in order to understand what he will be using. Indeed, the pain did not feel threating in any way. The shock intensity were from 15 to …show more content…
“The Obedience to Authority of Stanley Milgram” teaches us that we should question authority in order to have a good society. In many situations, people with authority tend to make others do their will for their own interest and passion. If we don’t question authority, we won’t be able to see if it is corrupt. Eventually, we will just become another brick in the wall and obey foul leaders. People of a society should not blindly follow authority figures. Questioning authority is a crucial way to improve society and bring people together. There needs to be a form of strong reasoning for following what the authority figures have said. If there isn’t any, the authority figures should be questioned on why they are ordering people to follow their