Assignment #9 - Obedience to Authority

Chapter 1
This is a very interesting topic, and this chapter serves as an introduction to it. Obedience is usually thought of as a good thing, and we are trained throughout our lives to always be obedient. Always obey your father and mother, your teachers, the authority figures in the government, policemen, etc. But no one ever thinks about the negative side effects of this training. People can misuse this, and this has been seen throughout history. Hitler and Nazi Germany is just one example.

Chapter 2
This short chapter is meant to explain how the experiment is organized. The obtaining participants section was actually kind of interesting to me. I was surprised that anyone even responded to the mail request. I would have probably just thrown it out as junk. I also wonder what kind of people respond to requests for psychology studies. I know he got a wide range of participants, but I was surprised that many people from that many backgrounds were willing to do it.

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 covers how Milgram determined what would be the expected behavior of the experiment. The majority of people thought that the subject would stop as soon as the victim requested to be let out. I actually didn't think this would happen. I would hope and pray it did, but I figured in reality they would stop way later. I thought I was a little bit of a cynic, but apparently I am just a realist.

Chapter 4
This chapter goes into details in four experiments and what he learns from them. Each experiment puts the subject and the victim closer to each other. When there was no feedback from the victim people didn't even bat an eye when going all the way to the end. The touch-proximity experiment was most interesting to me. I was surprised still so many people could force someone's hand down to shock them. This is the first really surprising thing to me, and it shouldn't have been.

Chapter 5
This chapter was definitely the most interesting so far. I liked how he described five very different people and their very different reactions to the experiment. The first guy, Bruno Batta, was the one who got to me the most. It was chilling just how unfeeling he became when performing the experiment.

Chapter 6
The next 11 experiments he does explores variations of the original to test things like men vs. women or location changes. Nothing here was too surprising to me. I guess the most surprising thing to me was the fact that even though they got to pick the shock level in Experiment 11, there was still a person who went all the way to the end.

Chapter 7
Another interesting chapter! I felt there was more diversity in the people described her, but of course since there were women involved this time, that almost a given. Elinor Rosenblum was the worst in my opinion. She has such a high opinion of herself, but she was no better than anyone else. Milgram even said she had a cherished if unrealistic picture of her own nature.  

Chapter 8
This chapter explored what would happen if there were changes in the authority figure, such as two conflicting authority figures or the authority figure was the one being shocked. This was in my opinion a great idea on Milgram's part. Nothing he has done too far has changed how far people go too much. Changing the authority figure though really produced some results. For example, when the authority figure was the one being shocked, the subject stopped right away. While for the most part expected, the results do show some important features of authority.

Chapter 9
This chapter adds in a new element in the mix, other peers. He wants to test the effects of conformity on the victim's decision. When other people rebel it seems to give the user added ability to rebel. This makes sense. It is always easier to do something when peer pressure encourages it.

Chapter 10
This is were the book goes downhill fast. This chapter analyzes why obedience exists. It is really theoretical and I see no point in it. I didn't feel like this chapter added anything to my understanding of the experiments Milgram performed.

Chapter 11
Another chapter I think is pointless!!! It discusses more about the agentic state and what keeps a person in it. His list of binding factors was interesting but not particularly surprising. It is interesting looking back and seeing how these things influenced the people as they did the experiment.

Chapter 12
The engineering side of me liked the formulas he gave that determine if a person obeys or disobeys. They were nice and simple and made a whole lot of sense. His discussion on strain was very in depth and actually was a little interesting.

Chapter 13
This chapter made me laugh a little. I thought it was funny that he included an entire chapter to disproving an alternate theory. I do agree with him though. Most of those people were not aggressive. 

Chapter 14
This chapter was interesting. It was basically him trying to prove that his experiments were valid and applied to people in general. He went through several objections people had and explained how they were wrong. I feel like we learned most of these things throughout the book through the explanations of the experiments.

Chapter 15
This chapter wasn't actually that bad for being an ending chapter. I especially liked the interview that he added. I think it was a good way to summarize and show the impact of his research.

Book Response
This book discussed all the experiments performed by Stanley Milgram to explore the affects of authority. He basic framework of the experiments were there was a subject who came in thinking that they were participating in a learning experiment where the person was the teacher and another person was the learner. They would read out word pairs for the "learner" to memorize, and when that person messed up the teacher would shock them with increasingly higher voltages.  In reality everyone else is an actor, and the shocks weren't atually occuring. The experiment was to see how far the person would go before disobeying the experimenter who was telling them to move on.


I think the most important lesson of this book is summarized in these lines: "Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures. This is a fatal flaw nature has designed into us, and which in the long run gives our species only a modest chance of survival." This is so true, which is why I think this is something that everyone should know about themselves. It might be hard to learn, but if we don't know about it, how can we fix it, and if we don't fix, we will continue to destroy ourselves. There is no doubt about that.