“How is it possible I ask myself, that ordinary people who are courteous and decent in everyday life can act callously inhumanely without any limitations of conscience?”
“Some psychologists were troubled by the ethnics of it. Many if not most subjects found it highly stressful conflicted experience. People are stammering, stuttering, laughing hysterically inappropriately.”
This experiment showed how people are easily pushed into doing something that they would normally not do. It not that people don’t have any conscience but rather they become submissive to another person who they see as an authority figure. From the experiment, there were a lot of subjects that didn’t want to continue when they heard the screams of pain but they still did because the researcher told them to. You can see they were hesitating as the electric shocks got higher and they kept look about at the researcher to ask whether or not they should continue. It’s very interest how the participants have the power to stop and refused to go on with the experiment but when the researcher tells them to continue they do. It becomes hard to resist the researcher when the participant already define the researcher as the source of authority. In their mind they have accept that the researcher is the person in charge and it hard for people to go against someone who they view as above them even if they are doing something unethical.