Most normal people obey authority figures even to inflict harm
Evidence
Milgram systematically varied many fea tures of this basic experimental situation (e.g., the proximity of the learner and the authority figure, the presence of dissenting peers), and many of these experimental manipulations significantly affected the behavior of the partici pants. Overall, though, the most important finding was that, in general, levels of obedience were alarmingly high. In the most frequently cited study, a full 65% of participants administered the complete sequence of electric shocks. Milgram thus demonstrated that normal people are capable of engaging in harmful and inhumane behavior simply because an authority figure asks them to do so. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 319
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Obedience to authority has enabled more atrocities than outright rebellion has — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 405; Duty-driven obedience, not personality, predicts cruelty under authority — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 434; People usually refuse direct cruelty to humanized others even under authority — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 631 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Duty-driven obedience, not personality, predicts cruelty under authority
#expands(0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 434 - Obedience to authority has enabled more atrocities than outright rebellion has
#expands(0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 405 - Ordinary people can commit extreme brutality under the right circumstances
#corroborates(0.85) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 1 - Situational deference to authority, not coercion, drives obedience to mass-murder regimes
#expands(0.83) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 46 - People usually refuse direct cruelty to humanized others even under authority
#complicates(0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 631 - Adult authority figures can induce childlike submission in powerful professionals.
#exemplifies(0.78) — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1140 - Organized harm is enabled by deliberately diffuse chains of authority
#qualifies(0.72)