If someone instructed you to perform an action that went past your moral boundaries, would you? What if it was a teacher, policeman, or a doctor? Although many of us like to believe that we would not conform to what these individuals ask of us, in the end, most of us would heed to their wishes. Why, you may ask, would a person perform an action that goes against what they believe in? This phenomenon comes down to our perception of authority. As Stanley Milgram demonstrated in his shock experiment, 26 out of the 40 (65%) participants shocked another subject with voltage that could kill someone, solely due to the fact that a person they perceived as having authority told them to do so (Milgram, 376).
In our society, we often do not question authority; instead, we simply do what they ask without even thinking about it. My psychology teacher in high school demonstrated society’s willingness to follow authoritative figures by simply asking the class to bring in a soda can the following day. When we got to class the next day, he asked us why we all brought in the soda can; we saw this question as weird and somewhat obvious, and answered “well, because you told us to.” My teacher made us see that, even though we had no idea why we would need the can, we simply obeyed his orders and did not question his request, due to the fact that he was a teacher and thus, in our eyes, had authority.
This phenomenon of authority and obedience not only explains why we listen to teachers, doctors, policemen, etc; it also explains greater social occurrences that take place, e.g. the Holocaust. Many of us question how so many people could follow Hitler and his malevolent requests of them. The answer to this simply lies in the fact that, as a society, we feel the need to obey an authoritative figure. Many of us believe that we would never obey a person that told us to kill another being; however, in Milgram’s experiment 26 out of the 40 ordinary, everyday men, heeded to doing just that by delivering a lethal shock (Milgram, 376). Although the shock was not real, none of the participants knew this at the time it was delivered. Thus, obedience does not only affect the “weak-willed” or “mean-hearted,” everyone is subject to conformity and obedience, because society tells us that authority must be upheld.
