learntoquestion ltq discussions

Questions to Consider:

Please use the following quote and questions as a guide for your post. You should also refer directly to the documentary of the Milgram experiment as well. You can choose to focus on one of the question sets, or to incorporate several of them into your response.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes: “The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.”

1. Do you think that everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others? What do the Milgram experiments suggest about the aspects of human behavior that could make it possible for us to willingly inflict pain on others?

2. Do you think that experiments like Milgram’s actually explain ordinary people’s active participation in violence, mass atrocities and genocide? What are the other factors that may come into play? What else, beside the blind following of authority, contributes to some people's willingness to inflict pain on others?

3. What are some of the important factors and perhaps even personality traits that led the ‘teachers’ in the Milgram experiment to disobey the ‘experimenters’ commands to continue to shock the ‘learner’? Can we attempt to create societies that value and encourage the traits of people who disobey unethical authority figures? Is there danger in that as well?

Word Count Requirement: 500-750 words

Readings to Reference:

Please refer to the ideas, either using a quote or paraphrasing, from at least one of the readings in your response.

Rethinking one of Psychology’s most infamous experiments (Cari Romm, 2015)

How the Nazi’s Defense of “Just Following Orders” Plays Out in the Mind (Joshua Barajas, 2016)

The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment (Maria Korrinkova, 2015)

Rubrics to Review:

I believe anyone could become a perpetrator, but if your morals are strong and you are sure of yourself, you wouldn't be a perpetrator of violence. The Milgram experiment strengthens this because the main reason as to why the people inflicted pain was because they were told. I believe that mostly everyone would never want to actually harm someone, but if they do not have established and strong morals for a while, they are easy targets to manipulate. Since they are already someone that doesn't have a high self confidence and strong sense of self, they already tend to easily be influenced by others around them, like we talked about in past topics. Since they can already be influenced by others, if a person tells them to do harm to someone else, especially since they are an authority figure, they may hesitate, but they will still do it. The Milgram experiment also shows how impactful an authority figure can be, being the person that someone else can depend on, and blame if something goes wrong. In the experiment, you can see some people willingly harm someone for an experiment just because an authority told them so. Sometimes human nature is listening to orders, even if you do not one hundred percent agree with what they are telling you. Since the instructor told the person to shock the other, and harm him, and he continued to do it, even if he felt bad, that still shows that people are capable of harming another if told. At the end of the experiment, it also showed that if someone can place the blame on another, they are more likely to do worse acts, since blaming the person takes it off of their conscience. Even though the person felt really bad, he still kept on repeating that I was told to do so, and I wanted to stop, yet did not actually stop or do something about it. I believed that he did not have high enough self confidence to be able to not let others tell him around, because he was capable of doing what he did, but that also does not necessarily mean he is a bad person, or he wants to harm another. Zygmunt Bauman speaking on the Holocaust, saying that “The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.” This relates a lot to the experiment because even that man did not believe he could confer that much pain to another, yet he did and did not stop himself. Nazi’s during the Holocaust most likley did not believe beforehand that they wanted to harm others, but because Hitler slowly brainwashed them into believing that they could do it to Jews, they thought it was ok, and continued to kill countless. Even when some were on trial, they always tried to blame Hitler and say it was just orders, like many people, always trying to blame another for their actions.

Violence is a major part of human life, and has been since the dawn of time. From cavemen fighting over food, to Crusaders marching at the will of their Pope, to major nations using advanced weaponry to secure additional resources, violence has impacted millions of lives. Despite this history of violence, not all people would be considered violent people. Around the world, there are firefighters, doctors, and EMTs, people whose jobs are to save lives. Most people would consider them kind and compassionate, and very much not violent. However, based upon the results of the Milgrim experiment and my outside knowledge, I would argue that they, as well as every human on earth, have the potential for violence against others.

Since most people aren’t violent by nature, it would require certain circumstances for them to commit acts of violence. These circumstances vary, and different examples can be seen throughout history. For example, I wouldn’t consider myself a violent person, but if anyone other than me ever hit or otherwise hurt my sister, I would gladly do the same to them. Another example of how people could be brought to violence is much more disturbing, and that is the Holocaust. Germany was struggling under the conditions of their surrender in World War I, and many of its inhabitants were unable to deal with the struggles, leading them to vote for the Nazi party. Once the Nazis were in power, the people were forced to or even willingly commit atrocious acts of violence in the hopes that it would lead to a better life. To put it more simply, there were some Germans who were willing to kill hundreds of other humans simply because they thought it could improve their own lives. So, clearly, humans can be driven to violence either by selfish means or others, but the important question is why.

The Milgrim experiment, as well as the Stanford Prison Experiment, offers important insight into why humans are willing to inflict pain on others. The Milgram experiment explains that many people are willing to commit acts of violence against other humans if they are told to do so by another human. This can help explain the Holocaust, where people blindly voted for the Nazi party in the hope of a better future, and then once they were in power they blindly followed their command. Such instances make it clear that elections hold incredible power, as well as systems of checks and balances within the government to avoid one party being able to become the one clear leader. The Stanford experiment, although much more unorthodox, demonstrates how easily humans can be manipulated to follow violent orders from a perceived authority. In the article The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment by Maria Karrinkova, she argues that some of the violent acts committed by the guards were largely because the guards believed they were supposed to be violent simply because the people in charge ignored violent conduct and told the participants that the prisoners were going to be stripped of their humanity. Both the Milgrim and Stanford experiments demonstrate that almost all people are capable of acts of violence, and highlights the importance of taking measures to prevent people from being violent, including laws, elections, and simply teaching people about not being violent.

The Milgram experiment reveals the troubling reality that many people have the potential to inflict harm on others when told to do so. The desire to obey an authoritative figure allows a person to dehumanize and torture an innocent victim. People are willing to go against what they know is right, starting with something small. When that threshold of injustice is crossed, the shocking truth concludes that most people will blindly follow someone who seems above them. Many people believe they would never do such a thing. However, the experiment shows that even after someone electrocuted another to the highest degree, they still deny that they would obey authority.

This experiment connects to real life in ways evident throughout history. If a person who holds power or who is feared by others makes a demand, people are likely to obey. In instances of genocide, the end result is not revealed. If Hitler were to say ¨my goal is to capture, torture, and murder all Jews around the world” there would be uproar, concern, and a call to action. However, propaganda and small requests slowly infiltrated the minds of citizens. Conflicting thoughts turned into anti-semitic comments, which turned into hate crimes, hate crimes into murder, and murder into the most atrocious genocide in world history. The subtle progression of intensity and gravity of the requests does not cause major alarm. The idea that Jewish people are evil is also a factor to be considered. Someone is more willing to hurt someone they believe is dangerous or different from them. Add an authoritative figure, commanding you to do so, and there is reassurance that you are doing what needs to be done to the “outgroup” to preserve the “ingroup.”

The Milgram experiment relies partially on the moral values of the “teacher.” Although the percentage is low, some people disobey the “experimenter” to end the harm being done to the “student.” Some people are naturally born rebellious or have been standing up to authority all their lives. These people are more likely to end the experiment, as they feel less submissive to someone in power. In a perfect society, people would be more encouraged to think for themselves and question everything. Now more than ever, citizens have challenged the government, police force, school systems, and other authoritative powers. People must have free will and the ability to stand up to corrupt leaders. However, there must be a balance between rebellion and obedience. It is still important that people follow the laws, as without them the world would not be safe. Citizens still need to file taxes, register to vote, and go to work every day. Although it may seem unpleasant, this is how our society functions, and without some conformity and obedience, it would crumble. All that is necessary is that people question everything, attempt to assess their morals, and live their lives as they deem fit, all while upkeeping society's laws.

I do not believe that everyone has the ability to inflict harm on a person but I do think it is incredibly rare to find a person who won't. The experiment suggests that anyone is capable of harming others, but especially if they are told to do so. Barajas, discusses humans' lack of responsibility when told to do something, in "How the Nazi’s Defence of Just Following Order” Plays Out in the Mind,” which also insinuates that humans feel they can sort of turn off their better judgment when someone else is telling them to do something. They proved this by monitoring how brain activity fluctuates after being given a command. They found that a person's brain activity is dampened when someone else gives them an order. I do not think that this explains why humans do what they do because there are so many factors and these people committing atrocities are not doing so in a controlled environment. They sometimes have peers, awareness of the situation, and freewill, all of which should affect their choices. Of course your natural reaction to being told to do something is to comply but it also matters what kind of person you are. Someone with a weak sense of self is looking for validation so complying is in their own best self interests. Someone who is confident and maybe has an inflated ego might question what gives the authority the right to tell them what to do. Specifically in the Milgram experiment, the teacher that disobeyed had strong morals and responsibility, and refused to go along with something because he knew no matter the situation it was wrong. The ones that went along with it, fed into their cognitive dissonance, and justified their actions with multiple excuses. Order in a society is dependent on following rules but too many rules takes away freedom and too few leads to extreme disorder. What gives society a balance depends on the freewill of the people in that society. Someone's right to choose isn't something our government can take away. People choose for themself whether obeying or disobeying is more beneficial to them and depending on the result those behaviors are rewarded or punished. I think that our society will always lean more towards conformity because of the environment that everyone is raised in. It tends to reward obedience and crush individuality and rebellion. In order to create a society that encourages disobedience of unethical authority figures you would have to put an extreme amount of effort into changing people who already lean towards obedience, and people likely wouldn't be open to that idea either. If by some miracle we did then society would possibly suffer. The military is an example of bad vs good authority and obedience. In some cases the authority is ethical and making decisions to the best of their ability to protect the greater good but they also could be making harmful decisions and that's why it's important that someone knows they have the choice to disobey authority in their own best interests.

I do think that everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others because the Milgram experiment proves it. The experiment shows that most of the teachers continued to give shocks to the students even when they hesitated because they were ordered to do so. The person delivering these orders had a very stern tone and I think that played a role in the way the teachers acted. We also learned that from an early age, children are taught to obey the higher ups such as their parents and teachers. This affects the way humans behave because we have been taught this all our lives. Personally I can agree with this because I feel like, as students at BLS, we have to obey many rules, have a structured day, do whatever the teachers ask of us otherwise we get punished, and even ask for permission to use the bathroom. I think that if someone of authority were to tell me to do something, I would be more likely to do it than if someone with no authority were to tell me to do something. I think that experiments like the Milgram experiment are a perfect way to explain how ordinary people can easily participate in violence, mass atrocities and genocides. Although genocides and mass atrocities seem far more severe than giving shocks to someone, it proves to us that we are capable of committing violence. These small acts of violence can then lead to severe acts of violence when someone with even more authority is telling you to do it. In an article about the Nazis actions, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London who ran a similar experiment said they “also used a questionnaire in the second experiment to get explicit judgments from the volunteers, who explained they felt less responsible when they acted under orders.” Additionally, if everyone around you is actively participating in such things, you would be more likely to do it because of herd mentality. Besides blindly following authority, there are also other factors that contribute to people’s willingness to inflict pain on others. For example, the Milgram experiment has given some money to the participants and although some may not need it, and may not see that as a reason to obey the authority, there are others who may be struggling financially and feel obliged to obey. I noticed that the one guy who was strongly disobeying the experimenters commands to continue was saying that they could take the money back and that he could not continue because the learner could be dead. I think this man was not only financially stable but also had a stronger morals which is the reason he didn’t continue. He just felt so strongly about it. This connects to the lessons we learned previously about how people behave differently depending on their self esteem. I think that we could possibly try to create a society that values disobeying unethical authority figures but that may lead to total chaos. People may begin to feel strongly about their own opinions which creates a lot of divides in the world. This can lead to bigger conflicts, wars, and etc.

The human conscience and the ability to harm has long been a question of philosophical and psychological debates—are humans innately good or evil? Do humans, despite centuries of developing civilization and establishing moral codes, resort so quickly to our primal urges to destroy and kill? The answer, as with everything human, is ambiguous. Humans and human consciousness always sit on one spectrum or another. However, the cases of the Milgram and the Stanford Prison experiment suggest a clean-cut answer: that when given the right conditions, there is nothing holding us back from returning to our innate malicious tendencies.

While I do not contest the data of these experiments, I am critical of the absoluteness of the conclusions. Both trials enlisted the participation of “normal” people, and put them in situations where they were given the ability to inflict harm on others, and the data collected showed that a good number of the subjects opted to do so. However, a key factor in both the studies has largely been overlooked in the discussions of the results, which is that in both experiments, a hierarchy was established. In the Milgram experiment, there was a distinction made between two “test subjects” (of which only one was the actual subject), as the “teacher” and the “student.” In the Stanford Prison experiment, the test group was divided into “guards” and “prisoners.” I believe that this distinction created emotional distance between the test subject and the victim, making it easier for the “teachers” or the “guards” to inflict harm on others.

In general, it is a strong moral principle that no human being should harm another human being. However, by creating a hierarchy in which the subject is above the victim, the superior ceases to see the inferior as an equal, effectively dehumanizing the victim and subconsciously justifying any cognitive dissonance that the inflictor may feel.

This phenomenon of dehumanization to excuse harm can be seen across history. Hitler’s Mein Kampf described Jewish people as the root of all evil and established all races other than the “Golden Race” as inferior, leading to the systematic genocide of entire populations. Slavery was justified by false scientific studies claiming that African Americans were biologically inferior to white people, establishing them as such an “other” that they were considered a different species. Propaganda posters in the World Wars often depicted the enemy as animalistic or barbaric to remove any guilt that the citizens may hold for the murder of enemy soldiers and raise morale.

This ability to dehumanize others to the point where harming or killing them comes easy to someone is ironically an echo of our most primal genetics. In the pack mentality drilled into our subconscious, we desire to be part of a group—the right group—and that desire causes us to ostracize and denounce any other group. The oxytocin in our brain not only increases empathy towards individuals we consider to be part of our own “group,” but also increases hostility towards individuals in the “out group.” These experiments make sure to emphasize the difference between the subjects and the victims, establishing the victims to be in a different group than the inflictors. The lessened feelings of guilt and the subconscious increase of hostility together make it easier for the test subjects to inflict pain on others.

Humans are not innately good or bad, but a product of centuries of biological hardwiring and social manipulation. Our decisions are a product of our environment and our biology, neither of which rules above the other. It is important to recognize that just as not all the test subjects of the two studies resorted to harm, not all of humanity will fall into this principle. We are endlessly varied in our perspectives, decisions, and cognitions, and thus it is essential that we recognize that fact and not seek to restrict or define our population with incorrect or insufficient labels.

I don’t think that Milgram’s experiment fully explained the participation in mass atrocities and genocide such as the Holocaust. Besides the shortcomings of the methodology referenced in Cari Romm’s article, such as the experimenter going off script, or that some volunteers knew the whole thing was a hoax, the teacher in that experiment was told that the ‘student’ would not be permanently injured, and that the shocks were painful but harmless. They were told this by someone they perceive to have knowledge: a professor at a prestigious university. If you compare this to low-level Nazis in the Holocaust, they knew what was going on. It was Hitler’s goal to solve the ‘Jewish problem’, he wanted to kill all the Jewish people. Thus, for Adolf Eichmann and other low-level officers, the defense that they didn’t know what was going to happen doesn’t hold up. Milgram’s experiment also doesn’t explain how many other factors could have collided for people when mass atrocities were happening. It only studies how people respond to orders from authority, not explaining why people supported Hitler’s ideas about Jewish people, for example. I think another big thing that comes into play here is the ‘Us vs. them’ mentality we were talking about earlier in class. A lot of propaganda went out to dehumanize other Jewish people during the Holocaust, which made mass murder easier for people.

However, this doesn’t mean that the whole experiment is worthless. One thing that really stuck out to me when we were watching the video of the man who went all the way and killed the student, he repeatedly verified that, if anything were to have happened to the student, the experimenter would be responsible for it, and not himself. Once, he was about to press the button to shock the student again, after the student had just been screaming in pain and saying that he had a heart condition, and he paused to re-verify, asking if he would be responsible if anything were to happen to the student. This suggests that nobody wants to feel responsible or guilty for something bad happening to another person or one’s death. However, some people might not care about the death in the first place. I think this is the big takeaway that explains how atrocities happen. I mean, people use this defense all the time when they’re talking about things like wearing clothes from SHEIN or other brands that use sweatshop labor. I don’t believe that everybody has the potential to purposefully kill somebody or be violent to somebody- as we see in Milgram’s experiment, 40% of people didn’t go all the way. At the same time, in Joshua Barajas’ article, he references how Patrick Haggard found that brain activity is actually dampened when you’re being coerced, by using brain scans. A loss of agency was seen in the brain. This shows that people are definitely more susceptible to doing bad things when they’re receiving orders from somebody else.

There’s many traits that someone who didn’t go all the way might possess. Assertive, for example, because the experimenter was repeatedly telling them to keep going with the experiment. We should be encouraging people to be assertive and stand up for what they believe as a society. There is a danger to this, though. If people always think that they are in the right, our society will never grow. There’s also a greater capacity for empathy in people who didn’t go all the way. I think we should definitely value empathy more as a society, or rather expect it more. Now, empathy is valued to a degree, but it’s perfectly normal to disregard others and put yourself first. It reminds me of that video we watched in class of the person on the street saying ‘help’ and nobody stopped to help him. Our capitalist society encourages selfishness and greed. For example, it’s a common thought that homeless people or poor people are like that because of a lack of personal merit or ability, and therefore that it isn’t your responsibility to help them. Instead of this, our society should encourage empathy and care for others.

I do believe that all people have the potential to become perpetrators of violence, however, some people may be more likely to act obediently than others and this can influence how each of us reacts in situations. The results of the Milgram certainly suggested that humans are capable of such actions that are harmful to innocent individuals, however, the ability to commit such actions isn’t without some influence. The Milgram experiment demonstrated how authoritative figures, such as the scientist, could influence the decision of obedience. When a person in power validates harmful actions, the perpetrator is more likely to continue with their bad behavior. Additionally, once they’re under the influence of this authoritative figure, it’s harder to break out of the pattern of obedient behavior – sometimes because we believe that we just have to push through and it will all be over soon. However, this mindset doesn’t spare innocent people from the harm of an obedient perpetrator.

I believe that the Milgram experiment only partially demonstrated the extent to which “ordinary” people are willing to participate in violence for several reasons. Firstly, the Milgram experiment did not have a diverse pool of participants thus limiting the results because the experimenters had not considered the factors of the participants’ identity such as race, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Additionally, since the participants were not a diverse group of individuals it’s hard to say if this is how an “ordinary” person would react to the given situation because the experiment wasn’t surveying a proper representation of the diverse population. Another aspect that I believe plays a role in obedience is groupthink. Since humans are social creatures, we crave the approval of others which can override personal morals and ethics. Once a person is obedient to another person or a group with other people in it, it also becomes harder for that individual to leave this party at the risk of being exiled. The willingness to intentionally harm another human being can be influenced by alienation of the group being harmed as is such in the case of the Holocaust. One’s own efforts to mitigate their guilt can manifest in ways of painting themselves as “having no choice” to decrease their moral dissonance. Additionally, the knowledge and ability to deflect blame onto other people contributes to a person’s willingness to harm another person knowing that they can preserve their moral character by blaming their actions on someone else. According to a study by Patrick Haggard, a cognitive neuroscientist, participants are more likely to inflict pain against other people if “acting under orders caused” which allowed them to “perceive a distance from outcomes they themselves caused” (Barajas 1).

Participants who disobeyed the “experimenter” may have had inherently more rebellious attitudes throughout their lives which made it easier to challenge the person in authority. Additionally, one of the participants who disobeyed the “experimenter” showed that he was confident in himself and his moral compass led him to speak up against the experiment. Additionally, some of the participants who disobeyed responded to the complaints from the “learner” and felt more inclined to listen to the “learner” rather than the “experimenter” perhaps indicating that they felt a stronger sense of connection with the learner as a part of an “us” group rather than externalizing the “learner” in a “them” group. If societies existed in which citizens were encouraged to stand up against authority, they would be in a constantly precarious position between order and anarchy. Without obedience, laws and regulations implemented for safety or others could lead to devastating consequences on an overall society, possibly destroying the order of how government and daily life happen.

Everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others. Obviously, most people don’t like to think that they are the type of person who would do something that is so clearly wrong, but oftentimes, they in fact are. As the Milgram experiments show, it is very possible for ordinary people to hurt others with relatively little persuasion. Simply being told that “the experiment requires that you continue” was enough to lead over 60% of ‘teachers’ to give what would be fatal shocks to the ‘learners.’ These experiments demonstrate just how eager we as people are to obey authority figures. The participants in the Milgram experiments were told that they would have no negative repercussions if they ended the experiment, but because society almost always punishes people who disobey authority, the participants were pre-conditioned to blindly follow instructions, even if they were to cause harm, and so they did. As we have seen throughout history, the argument that someone was “just following orders” has been used as an excuse to justify horrible atrocities far too often. Like with the Holocaust, where Nazis genocided massive numbers of Jewish people, along with other minorities, seemingly ‘ordinary’ people have the ability to hurt and kill millions. Looking at the Holocaust from the present day, it is very clear to us that the Nazis were in the wrong, but to many people in Nazi Germany, they thought that causing harm was the right thing to do. In their eyes, they couldn’t possibly be killing innocent people for no reason, so there must have been something wrong with Jewish people, or it was what the people in power wanted, so it must be right. All this connects with what Bauman says—it is frightening that terrible acts of this scale could be committed against humans, but it is even more terrifying to know that we could commit things like the Holocaust with much less pushback than one would expect.

I also found it very interesting that “when Milgram described this experiment to a group of 39 psychiatrists, the psychiatrists predicted that one participant in 1,000 would continue until he or she delivered the most severe shock, 450 volts” (Facing History 2). This, of course, turned out to be very far from the truth, but I think it just goes to show how much we underestimate how easily persuaded we are. Even the psychiatrists, whose job it is to understand the human brain and how it works vastly underestimated how many people would go all the way. Were they bad psychiatrists? That is always a possibility, but I don’t think so. I think they just had faith that most people would do the clearly right thing, even when being told to do otherwise. They were hoping for something better than the reality where nearly ⅔ went all the way.

Although well over half of the ‘teachers’ in the Milgram experiments obeyed the experimenters and shocked the ‘learner’ with the most severe voltage, there were still a significant number who stopped and I think that they are just as important as the ones who continued. While it is easy to look at the fact that 62.5% of people would shock someone just because a person in a lab coat told them to and be completely disheartened by it, we can also look at the fact that 37.5% of people stopped. Over a third of people involved in the experiment refused to continue to shock another, directly challenging authority. Further, I think it is very important to build a society that values & encourages people to disobey unethical authority figures. Although a large share of the time, questioning authority brings good, there can also be a danger in a society that encourages disobedience because authority figures are not always wrong. Sometimes they are right in their instructions, so having people disobey them could be harmful. But, if people are disobeying, it means they are at least thinking about what they are doing and not just blindly following. I think it is better that people sometimes disobey good orders than to always obey bad ones, because at least they are making the decision for themselves.

The experiments show how people can change due to the presence of an authority figure. The figure in the experiment instructed participants to administer shocks to a volunteer who was a part of the experiment. In the video showing the experiments, we see that many participants continued to shock the learner despite signs of distress, which shows that people can prioritize the opinion of authority over their own moral judgment. In the experiment the participants' obedience is encouraged when they are told they have to comply in the experiment. Oftentimes, when participants began to second guess the actions they were committing, the director of the experiment seems to suggest that the entire experiment relies on the teacher.

Though the Milgram Experiments do show the power of authority, I believe they do not fully explain peoples actions in situations of mass violence, such as genocide. Oftentimes other factors which are not seen in the experiment influence the actions of seemingly normal people, including social influences and peer pressure. For example, in her article The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment, published in The New Yorker in June 2015, Maria Konnikova explains how situational experiences and the behavior of the people around you can lead individuals to change how they act, even if in cruelty. Konnikova also comments on how societal norms can make people justify their actions as necessary or acceptable especially if they are engaging in harmful behaviors.

However, while watching the video not all participants in the Milgram experiments complied with the authority. In the case of the man who does not comply with the experiment and decides to not continue administering shocks, he starts to believe that the learner is approaching a point where the shocks are being too much for him. The teacher realizes that he does not truly care about the experiment, especially when an injury is potentially in his hands. The man’s morals and judgment seem to over power his decision to comply with authority. The man began to feel an increased personal responsibility and he questioned whether what he was doing was harming someone else. In the video he voiced his discomfort and told the authority figure that he did not want to continue.

In the experiment, I belief that the separation of the teacher and the learner was important and impacted how the teachers interpreted the shocks. The teachers were unaware of how the learner was reacting to electric shocks apart from hearing a yell or scream. As the power of the shocks grew the teachers began to become more uncomfortable as the yells grew louder from the learner. Though some continued, I believe the lack of knowing what happened to the learner, prevented the man who stopped, from continuing the experiment. The distance between the learner and teacher showed that a person may become disconnected with an emotion or situation due to a lack of understanding or even a voluntary lack of acknowledgement. The teacher does not understand the physical effect his actions are having but continues to blindly follow the authority. In the case of the perpetrators in mass violence, people may feel as though they are not directly contributing to violence due to a lack of understanding or a lack of physical knowledge. Furthermore, authority figures can often force people into a sense of disillusionment which prevents people from understanding their actions.

I think that everyone has the potential to become a perpetrator of violence against others because we are all capable of the same things. Although one person might feel differently about doing it than another person, such as if they have lots of cognitive dissonance, there’s still the chance for everyone. The Milgram experiments prove this, and they also show that humans crave leadership, especially in unfamiliar situations, like a random person with no knowledge of electricity shocking someone. The person who went all the way to 450 volts was a prime example of a human that craves leadership, because he personally felt that he should stop, but the experimenter, who seemed like much more of an expert, told him to continue, so, not wanting to defy authority, he continued. Compared to the first “teacher” shown, who stopped well before reaching 450 volts, he probably has learned to be obedient through wanting to fit in with the rest of society. I think that experiments like the one Milgram performed prove the Obedience Theory, but there are multiple other factors like peer pressure to not join a movement and hatred of the movement or leader. Besides the blind following of authority, people might be willing to inflict pain on others because the people who the pain is being inflicted on could be in the inflictor’s way, or the inflictor might want to harm the other person as payback. This pain doesn’t only have to be physical pain; it can be emotional as well. Some of the most important factors are when the “learner” cried out in pain, people were more likely to stop, or at least pause and reconsider. Some of the personality traits that a person who stopped would have are self-confidence and a desire to help people in need. We can attempt to create societies that prize these character traits, but if everyone is so self-confident that no one listens to authority, the world would be a lot more chaotic. One thing that surprised me about the Milgram experiment, which I read about in the article called “Rethinking One of Psychology’s Most Infamous Experiments”, was that some people knew that the cover was fake, which makes me wonder if they still continued with the experiment. I also wonder if there was anyone who, once debriefed, didn’t feel any sort of remorse or cognitive dissonance. What also surprised me was that another scientist repeated the experiment in 2007 and came up with the same findings as Stanley Milgram did 46 years earlier. Milgram also realized that peer pressure has huge effects on obedience: if a big group of people are following a leader, most others will start following the leader as well; not necessarily because they support the leader, but simply because they don’t want to be alone and crave society’s comforts. The environment has a significant impact on a person’s conduct as well; if something is publicized everywhere, there’s more of a chance that someone will do the thing.