Comparing Milgram And Stanford Prison Experiment

In ancient Asia, there were two great philosophers with opposite arguments. Confucius argued that human nature is fundamentally good; but Xun Kuang opposed the Good Nature Principle and supported the Evil Nature Principle. However, what they both agreed is that person’s behavior develops through the power of the situation rather than individual personality or conscience. But it was not until recently that modern scientific researchers did experiment regarding the topic. Two scientific experiments, Milgram Experiment and Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated person’s obedience to his situation. They proved that authority can readily change a person’s behavior and under persuasive situation, even a truly rational person can ignore moral conviction …show more content…
Under the theory, even a well-educated and rational person can act brutally under authority of certain situations. He designed his notorious experiment to study the theory. In his experiment, subjects were told to administer shocks to students, who were collaborators in the experiment. Even though the pseudo-subjects gave out pained cries, the students abandoned their own moral standards when they were exposed to authority and followed the administrator’s order. Prior to the beginning of the experiment, Milgram expected that only 0.1% of people would use highest-voltage punishment. However, 65% of subjects followed their authority and used the 450-volts punishment, even some of them suffered psychological trauma later. The experiment shows that a higher authority has a strong influence on their follower’s behaviors and decision making. The influence of higher authority can be easily found in military actions. During the Korean War (between South and North Korea), North Korean soldiers shot at civilians, who could have been their families or relatives. They would not have done so unless they had been ordered by an