Summary Of Stanley Milgram's Obedience To Authority

In the book Obedience to Authority, Stanley Milgram conducts an experiment where he recruited 40 men. They found out about the experiment through an advertisement that was placed in a local newspaper, and it was an experiment that was a study of memory and learning, and he offered to pay each of them $4.50 if they participated for one hour. Each person would draw a card and it would either say “teacher” or “student” on the card. The teacher then reads off a list of word pairs to the student, and if the student guesses the word wrong then the student gets shocked. On the shock generator the shocks range from 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts and it went up from slight shock all the way up to Danger: Severe shock. When it comes to the topic of the book Obedience to Authority, most people understand that people will almost always obey authority figures. Indeed, it seems like most of us believe that we will obey authority figures because we are taught to from the time that we are little. But agreement on this subject is not unlimited. Where the agreement usually ends and argument begins is when the discussion turns to questions involving what does obedience really mean? In terms of Stanley Milgram he defines obedience as “ Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to. Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority” (Milgram 1). Some people seem to believe that a lot of the world is more obedient these days and more obedient to authority …show more content…
We all have different views as to why we fear disobedience. One example as to why someone would fear disobedience is because if we disobey we could get punished for it. Milgram would agree with the idea of the fear of being hurt. Milgram would insist this because he is not saying that obedience is