“Under what conditions would a person obey authority under actions that went against conscience?”
“They were in a state of conflict which caused an immense amount of stress.”
The experiment conducted by Milgram was based on this central question. In order words the question asks what would cause someone to obey authority that asks them to do something unethical to a fellow human being? When I had intro to psychology last semester, this experiment was one of the ones which we looked at to see how willing people are to obey. I always compare the Milgram experiment to the Stanford Prison experiment because they are both based on how people respond to authority. However the difference between hoth experiments is that the Stanford experiment had the “good guards” who treated the inmates better than the “bad guards” who inflicted pain on the inmates. The participants in the Milgram experiment could be seen as the good guards in this case because they had conscience. The instructions that they were given was very conflicting because they thought they were inflicting pain through shock. They could’ve stopped at the second Voltage, but they kept going because they were told to. Their actions were caused by obedience to authority.
~Damilola Babarinde