Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

What can a good citizen do to obey an order? Reflections on the tens of thousands of people in Nazi Germany who sent their own kind to their deaths simply by doing their duty led Stanley Milgram to think of a provocative experiment. The behavior of the subjects in various variations of the experiment invariably confirmed Milgraham's terrible conjectures: some test participants severely "punished" others without exercising their right to refuse. The paradox is that such virtues as loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice, which we so value in human beings, bind people to the most inhumane systems of power. But human nature has not changed since the Nazi death camps. This is why the relevance of the concept, which the experiment proves with frightening conviction, can be challenged but dangerously underestimated. Milgram's famous experiment, which at first aroused protest and disbelief among many, was later recognized as one of the most morally significant studies in psychology.