Hitler and Mussolini were both individuals that used social influences throughout history . Each of these evil villains used authority and social pressure to persuade and manipulate people into performing acts that they wouldn’t normally do . Hitler and Mussolini legitimized their authority through immoral actions and fear and abused their authority. This is important because authority and social pressures are one of the most dangerous combinations there are. The use of these two socially accepted tools have resulted in the deaths of more people, and lead to atrocities such as more genocides than any other social force. . In the 1950s a psychologist Solomon Asch at Rutgers University decided to test group and individuals against in …show more content…
When the engagers were in fronted by their actions they passed the blame to their superiors Solomon Asch`s “opinions and Social Pressure” studied white college males from a ivy league school. Ash conducted two experiments, the first was a “Physiological experiment” which was visual group test the other was a two partner question test. When the participant new they were right they conformed to the majority of the group, forgetting about their own morals and values. Asch found the same results from both test. Asch stated that “[w]hen consensus comes under the dominance of conformity, the social process is polluted and the individual at the same time surrenders the powers on which his functioning as a feeling and thinking being depends”(357). In “Perils in Obedience,” Stanley Milgram studied social forces and obedience. Milgram does this by having subjects think they are shocking individuals in a chair for getting wrong answers to questions asked by the subjects. The results showed the participants conformed to the authority of the researchers by going against their own morals and values. Milgram stated that “[t]hey suspected that only 4 percent would reach 300 volts, and that only a pathological fringe of about one in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board”(362). He never thought that 60 percent of the subjects would have administered that high of a shock. Milgram connected his results to Nazi Germany and stated that:
In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.
Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.
The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often
Social influences shape every person's practices, judgments, and beliefs. (Asch 306) In "Opinions and Social Pressure", Solomon Asch examines how individuals tend to conform to a group or majority. He does this by explaining the results of his experiment that he devised to observe to what extent conformity occurs. In her essay titled "Group Minds", Doris Lessing claims that as a society we have enough knowledge about conformity to do something about it, yet we choose not to. Although Doris Lessing and Solomon Asch both suggest that people desire independence yet yield to conformity, Asch's experiment adds specificity to Lessing's claims. Lessing speaks generally about groups and the effect they have on conformity, whereas Asch's experiment
Authority cannot exist without obedience. Society is built on this small, but important concept. Without authority and its required obedience, there would only be anarchy and chaos. But how much is too much, or too little? There is a fine line between following blindly and irrational refusal to obey those in a meaningful position of authority. Obedience to authority is a real and powerful force that should be understood and respected in order to handle each situation in the best possible manner.
The Excerpt “The Peril of Obedience by Stanley Milgram discusses an experiment testing on individuals through cruel and unmoral experiments. After reading Milgram’s text about the experiments conducted to see if individuals would compile with authority even if the command was unmoral. Stanley Milgram, an excerpt From “The Perils of obedience”, states that Milgram is making the following statement concerning the condition of the experiment: “This condition of the experiment undermines another commonly offered explanation of the subjects’ behavior- that those who shocked the victim at the most severe levels came only from sadistic fringe of society” (Milgram 699). By stating this Milgram explains that even if it means harming other human beings
In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, published the findings of his infamous human authority experiment. During this trial, human subjects were tested to discern how far one will go in order to obey the commands of an authority figure. The test subjects were fooled into believing someone was actually being shocked; however, the reality was the other person was simply an actor and never received any shocks. The results were astounding: sixty-five percent of the subjects continued the entire 450 volts, while the rest lasted until at least 300 volts. In response to the experiment, Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkley, examined the actions and moral issues executed by
As we grow up our parents teach us how to be respectful and very well-mannered. They enforce the importance of saying, “Please, thank you, and excuse me,” when needed. Parents also insist we listen and respect our elders, because they have authority over the world since they have been here the longest. We were raised to comply with the demand of someone who had authority over us. According to Patricia Werhane (1), “In the early1960’s Stanley Milgram undertook his noteworthy study of human obedience to authority. Puzzled by the question of how otherwise decent people could knowingly contribute to the massive genocide of the Holocaust during World War II, Milgram designed an experiment that sought to cause a conflict between one’s willingness to obey authority and one’s personal conscience.”
Today our society raises us to believe that obedience is good and disobedience is bad. We are taught that we should all do what we’re told and that the people that are disobedient are almost always bad people. Society tells us this, but it is not true. Most people will even be obedient to the point of causing harm to others, because to be disobedient requires the courage to be alone against authority. In Stanley Milgram’s "Perils of Obedience" experiment, his studies showed that sixty percent of ordinary people would agree to obey an authority figure even to the point of severely hurting another human being. (Milgram 347).
Can the average person, when confronted by authority and ordered to hurt another human being, be able to do so? According to the results of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on Obedience to Authority and the numerous testimonies from Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, the answer is yes, provided that the individual committing the act was ordered to do so by an authority figure and/or believes that responsibility will be deferred to said higher authority. There is therefore potential that the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust can be reasonably explained by the results of Milgram’s experiments and Milgram’s Agency Theory.
This experiment found that when a group of two other people refused to obey the conditions of the experiment, then the third person would most likely do the same. It was found that, “The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%” (McLeod 588). A similar finding is noted in Solomon Asch’s “Opinions and Social Pressure”, where it was found that when someone is among their peers, they are more likely to conform to the group opinion. Asch acknowledges that social pressure plays a large role because the individual “must declare his judgments in public, before a majority which has also stated its position publicly” (Asch 599). This confirms the idea that an individual is more likely to conform when they are being judged by their
Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”
American psychologist, Rollo May, once said, “the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” This philosophy is supported by Solomon E.Asch’s in his article, “The Opinions and Social Pressure.” In the article, Asch conducts a series of experiments that centralize on the influences of social pressure and the extent to which an individual, when confronted by the differing opinions of a majority, will surrender their perceptions to others. Asch argues that although humans believe they’re independent in their decision-making, they tend to pay heed to the majority because they fear the scrutiny of others and being an outcast in the group.
Solomon Asch was a psychologist that conduced numerous expirments designed to illustrate the increasing conformity within social groups. The experiments also invesigated the effect the number of people present within the group had one the conformity rate. Asch hypothesized, “ that the majority of the people would not conform to something obviosly wrong; however, when surrounded by (other) individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, 75% of them(the participant) will conform to the groups answer” (Watzlawick 1976)
Social Pressure is defined by textbook as “the real or perceived idea that if one deviates from expected standard group behavior, there will be real, expected, or imagined consequences from other group members,” (Hansen-Horn, 2008, p. 184). On college and university campuses, students are often unaware of social pressures and the effects that social pressures can have on a student’s mental and physical health. Mid-America University has taken this issue and has created an interactive program for freshman students not only to inform them, but to also help make wise decisions when confronted with these pressures. First, the university will research issues that students faces as well as decisions that they make and why they make them. From