Compare And Contrast Essay: The Perils Of Obedience

Stanley Milligram and Phillip Zimbardo are two acclaimed psychologists for their infamous and controversial social experiments that revealed provocative truths about human obedience. Milgram’s psychological experiment, designed to uncover the mystery behind the occurrence of the Holocaust, is presented and analyzed in his article “The Perils of Obedience.” While on the surface this experiment appears to be about education, it is actually designed to place people in a turbulent situation where a decision must be made to either obey or defy an authoritative figure (Milgram 78-79). From his findings Milgram concluded the physical presence of an authoritative figure and reduction of personal responsibility increased obedience (Milgram 88). Another

popular psychological experiment, designed to examine the power hierarchy of prison systems, is discussed in the article “The Stanford Prison Experiment” written by Phillip G. Zimbardo; human obedience is reexamined in the setting of a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department (Zimbardo 105-106). Local students are paid $15 a day to roleplay as prisoners and guards while Zimbardo and his fellow colleagues watch from behind the scenes (Zimbardo 107). Over the course of the experiment, the prison environment escalated dangerously, and discontinuation became necessary after six days, which was a completely unexpected outcome because the prison was not real (Zimbardo 116). Both the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, while possessing very different stipulations and motives, effectively discuss human susceptibility to immorality and Milgram successfully discusses duty without conflict while Zimbardo is ineffective in revealing truth about human obedience.
In both the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, ordinary people are surprisingly and effectively proven capable of horrific actions. Milgram estimated only 4% of people would administer a shock of 300 volts and only one in a thousand people would administer the highest shock of 450 volts, but surprisingly, when the experiment was first administered about 60% of people were fully obedient, completing the experiment and shocking the learner at the highest voltage (Milgram 80). When the Milgram experiment was recreated almost 45 years later by ABC News with the modification that the highest shock a teacher was able to administer was 150 volts in order to decrease physiological trauma, the results collected revealed 70% of people administered the highest shock of 150 volts, making them very likely to continue to the highest voltage if present in the original stipulations of Milgram’s experiment ("Basic Instinct 5: Milgram Experiment Re-visited”). The results discovered by the recreation of Milgram’s experiment by ABC News strengthens Milgram’s original findings while also supporting similar conclusions made by Zimbardo.
The participants in the Zimbardo experiment were described as emotionally stable, physically healthy, mature, [and] law-abiding (Zimbardo 107).

Yet, the prison guards unquestionably insulted and tortured the prisoners by denying the right to use the restroom, forcing prisoners into dark isolation, enacting physical punishments like excessive push-ups, spraying prisoners with a fire extinguisher, stripping prisoners of their clothing, and ordering the cleaning of night time relief buckets to be done by hand (Zimbardo 108-110). The guards and the teachers from both experiments are classified as "normal" individuals, but Zimbardo effectively relates the heinous acts of the prison guards to situational forces while Milgram indecisively blames the lack of resources a person possesses to resist authority as the cause of the teacher’s

behavior.
The effects of situational forces are discussed in not only the Zimbardo experiment but also in Robert Wechsler's article "The Lucifer Effect II—Situational Forces." Wechsler presents that individuals must recognize the pressure of situational forces in order to "avoid, prevent, challenge, and change" the circumstances (Wechsler). He further concludes the dehumanization of prisoners in prison systems places guards at increased risk to be drawn in by situational forces, which relates well to the Zimbardo experiment (Wechsler). By calling prisoners by their ID numbers and being placed at a superior position, Zimbardo would argue the situational forces the guards faced inevitably caused their actions. “The institutional pressures of a ‘prison environment’” transformed ordinary individuals into monstrosities (Zimbardo 116). The guards of the prison faced no authoritative command to commit their actions; they chose their path on their own, which invalidates Milgram’s argument that people simply do not have the resources to resist authority (Milgram 86). Rather, situational pressures cause people to act outside of morality. While the guards and teachers both expressed regret when retrospectively viewing their actions, Zimbardo effectively relates the cause of the initial actions to the surrounding situational pressures (Zimbardo 116). Few people possess the role of a prison guard in actuality, but in fact without proper understanding of situations, roles assumed in everyday life may not be too far arbitrary. From racism to sexism, society is force themselves into the roles of either guards or prisoners because of alteration to judgment and to decency from surrounding situations. The desire to suffice the need for power and human nature overcomes morality and sound judgment in many situations like proven by Zimbardo and Milgram.
Milgram and Zimbardo present differing reasons to explain the actions of the guards and the teachers. Milgram effectively explains the concept of duty without conflict that “justifies” the actions of the teachers in his experiment by explaining in order for a person to feel responsible for his or her actions, there must be a direct correlation between the action and the person. In the case of the Milgram experiment, the teacher serves as an intermediate chain in the line of action and not a direct cause, which explains the teacher’s immoral actions (Milgram 79). An authoritative figure instructed the teacher to commit a morally incorrect action, so in most cases the teacher did not psychologically assume complete responsible for his or her actions. Once the experimenter ensured the teacher he assumes full responsibility for anything that happens to the learner, the majority of test subjects continued the experiment with ease (Milgram 81). Like Milgram, Saul McLeod, author of “Obedience to Authority,” would agree with the disconnection a person experiences to their actions when instructed by authority. Similarly to Milgram, he would relate phenomena to the occurrence of the Holocaust. McLeod also discusses the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Holocaust logistical mastermind, who was surprised to hear that Jewish people hated him for assisting in the execution and transportation plans of their genocide but was declared sane by six psychologists. When on trial, he argued he was simply following orders and was not responsible for his actions—similar to the teachers in Milgram’s experiment (McLeod).
Zimbardo also discusses the of concept duty without conflict in his article and relates the actions of the guards to the human desire of acceptance.

The guards in the experiement readily “slipped into [their] roles, temporarily gave up [their] identities, and allowed… assigned roles and the social forces in the situation to guide, shape, and eventually to control [their] freedom of thought and action” (Zimbardo 111). Zimbardo further explains the behavior of the “good guards” was driven by the avoidance of rejection and not by the well-being of the inmates (Zimbardo 113). Jennifer L. Black, author of “Conformity, Obedience, and Influence in Social Psychology,” explains conformity focuses on altering oneself in order to belong with a group, while obedience is caused by pressure from a hierarchal power chain (Black). In both cases a person’s behavior deviates from “the normal,” but the causes are different. Milgram is more effective in presenting the teacher’s reasons for behavioral deviances because he is more definitive in his logic and reasoning. The combination of the two experiments effectively help to begin to uncover the mysteries behind the Holocaust. What should society think or do based on the results of the

article?
The Milgram and Zimbardo experiments are the first and nearly all the insight given to the world about human tendencies in regards to obedience. While the ethics and reliability of the experiments remain in question to this day, it is certain they sparked questions about the human race. One can never be certain his or her actions and reactions in challenging situations, and everyone should be mindful of the results in order to best maintain morality and to combat societal and authoritative pressures.