Introduction:
Obedience refers to the act of obeying commands from an individual who is perceived as an authority figure. As a form of social influence taught from early childhood, obedience plays a crucial role within society to create and maintain order and stability (Colman, 2015). Although obedience serves numerous productive functions, orders given to cause physical or mental harm can be detrimental. Throughout his rise to power, Adolf Hitler used this psychological mechanism for his own political purpose which consequently led to the killings of millions of innocent people. During the Nuremberg trials where justice was sought against Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann surprisingly claimed in his defence that he had simply obeyed orders (Baron & Branscombe, 2013). Influenced by the events of the Holocaust, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of famous yet controversial laboratory experiments investigating destructive obedience (Milgram, 1963, 1965).
Aim: …show more content…
More precisely, Milgram (1963) measured the levels of obedience present in participants whom were instructed by an experimenter to administer electric shocks to another
Obedience refers to the act of obeying commands from an individual who is perceived as an authority figure. As a form of social influence taught from early childhood, obedience plays a crucial role within society to create and maintain order and stability (Colman, 2015). Although obedience serves numerous productive functions, orders given to cause physical or mental harm can be detrimental. Throughout his rise to power, Adolf Hitler used this psychological mechanism for his own political purpose which consequently led to the killings of millions of innocent people. During the Nuremberg trials where justice was sought against Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann surprisingly claimed in his defence that he had simply obeyed orders (Baron & Branscombe, 2013). Influenced by the events of the Holocaust, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of famous yet controversial laboratory experiments investigating destructive obedience (Milgram, 1963, 1965).
Aim: …show more content…
More precisely, Milgram (1963) measured the levels of obedience present in participants whom were instructed by an experimenter to administer electric shocks to another