Obedience is a quality in which many people attempt to maintain throughout their lives in order for them to avoid any type of negative confrontations with authority figures. In Diana Baumrind’s article, “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”, and Ian Parker’s article over “Obedience”, the authors come to an agreement over the comparison between the two variables in Milgram’s experiment appearing to be imperfectly designed to create an effect that potentially altered the results that Milgram had recorded. Parker and Baumrind each unearth evidence supporting a key factor in which a person reacts to orders given by some figure of authority is not based essentially on who a person is as an individual, but the situation that surrounds
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“The dependent, obedient attitude assumed by most subjects in the experimental setting is appropriate to the situation” (Baumrind 90). As Baumrind states throughout her piece, one of the most important factors that need to be taken into consideration when conducting an experiment such as Milgram’s is the setting in which the experimenter places the subject in order to observe reactions resulting from a series of stimulated events. When one is placed into a situation with an individual that is viewed as a figure of authority, the subject subconsciously regards this person with trust and obedience (Baumrind 90). The obedience experiment demonstrates that people tend to obey orders more willingly when the apparent authority figure is present in the same room, even when the orders are seen as unethical (“Obedience to Authority”). The situation a person is found in and the desire to readily obey orders given by authority is potentially the factors that caused the vulnerability Milgram believes contributed to the rise of the Holocaust and the willingness of the Nazi’s to obey Hitler’s orders to diminish the Jews from Germany. Milgram claims that the Nazi s not only performed such destructive acts because they had been ordered to do so, but because they believed that what they were doing was right (Parker 102). With that being said, Milgram concludes his experimental observations with the claim that obedience to authority is ingrained in all of us from the way we are brought up and this could cause ordinary people to be more likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (“The Milgram Experiment”). Consequently, the parallel between authority-subordinate relationships in Hitler’s Germany and Milgram’s laboratory is unclear
“The dependent, obedient attitude assumed by most subjects in the experimental setting is appropriate to the situation” (Baumrind 90). As Baumrind states throughout her piece, one of the most important factors that need to be taken into consideration when conducting an experiment such as Milgram’s is the setting in which the experimenter places the subject in order to observe reactions resulting from a series of stimulated events. When one is placed into a situation with an individual that is viewed as a figure of authority, the subject subconsciously regards this person with trust and obedience (Baumrind 90). The obedience experiment demonstrates that people tend to obey orders more willingly when the apparent authority figure is present in the same room, even when the orders are seen as unethical (“Obedience to Authority”). The situation a person is found in and the desire to readily obey orders given by authority is potentially the factors that caused the vulnerability Milgram believes contributed to the rise of the Holocaust and the willingness of the Nazi’s to obey Hitler’s orders to diminish the Jews from Germany. Milgram claims that the Nazi s not only performed such destructive acts because they had been ordered to do so, but because they believed that what they were doing was right (Parker 102). With that being said, Milgram concludes his experimental observations with the claim that obedience to authority is ingrained in all of us from the way we are brought up and this could cause ordinary people to be more likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (“The Milgram Experiment”). Consequently, the parallel between authority-subordinate relationships in Hitler’s Germany and Milgram’s laboratory is unclear