Obedience vs Responsibility Essay

obedience and Responsibility In Stanley Milgrams, The Perils of Obedience, Milgram states The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the dick for carrying out another persons wishes, and he therefore no giganticer regards himself as prudent for his actions. (Milgram 6) Through his try outs he shows how we obey commands against our better judgment. It my belief that we are generally obedient as long as psyche else assumes responsibility for the outcome. Therefore, this poses the question would we be fully obedient if we were held amenable for the outcome?Milgrams investigate consists of three roles the experimenter, the teacher, and the learner. The learner, who is actually an actor, is strapped to an electrocution device is tested on his ability to remember a word of a pair when he hears the first one again. The teacher, the actual test subject, asks the questions and conducts a go against ranging from fifteen volts to four hundred fifty volts for i ncorrect answers. The experimenter is simply there to guide the teacher and demean the findings.The experiment begins by the teacher asking the learner questions. When the learner answers incorrectly, the teacher must correct him and administer a shock starting at the lowest voltage. As the experiment stops the voltages increase and so does the reception from the learner. What begins as minor discomfort on the learner quickly turns into screams of pain and pleas to be released. The experimenters assembly line is to record the reactions of the teacher based on learners reactions and how long the teacher will continue to go on with the experiment.The results of the first experiment conducted on a group of Yale undergraduates, showed that about sixty share of them were fully obedient, still to the maximum voltage. (Milgram 2) A colleague of Milgrams dismissed the findings stating, Yale undergraduates are a extremely aggressive bunch who steps on each others neck on the slightest provocation. (Milgram 2) He believed that when the experiment was carried out on ordinary people the results would be much different.The second experiment was conducted on professionals, white-collar workers, unemployed persons, and industrial workers. The results were very much the same as those of the Yale students. One specific experiment involving Fred Prozi, a good natured unemployed fifty year old, shows that once responsibility is placed on someone else we are content with following demands that are given. At one point in the experiment Prozi turns to the experimenter and says, You demand all responsibility? (Milgram 4) Once the experimenter agrees Prozi continues and inflicts a 450 volt shock numerous times despite sense of hearing the learners scream of agony and pleas to be released. This shows that once we detach ourselves from the responsibility of the outcome, we will comply with the demands given even if the effects of the demands are harmful, destructive and blata ntly clear. In a variation of the experiment, the teacher was not unavoidable to pull the lever that shocked the learner rather they just had to administer the word pair test.This take away even more of the responsibility of the teacher, since they were not actually inflicting pain on the victim. The result of the result of this experiment showed that 37 out of 40 adults continued to the highest level on the shock generator. (Milgram 7) We see this type of demeanour in everyday society. People are willing to carry out the demands of others if they feel the demands are not neccassarily their views or actions. An example of this could be someone dismissing someone from a job because their senior boss staged them to.They may not feel the same way about the employee or the descision to fire them, but they mop up any worked up responsibility because they were just following orders. An even better example of this would be that of state of war in modern society. Since soldiers are gi ven orders to kill by their selects, they can remove any emotional responsibility because they were simply following orders. Likewise, the person odering the soldier to kill someone removes the responsibility on the superior because they are actually committing the act of murder.Also, many Americans can justify was because we as individuals arent actually fight the war and do not see the effects of the war daily. In conclusion, it is my belief that if we were held personally responsible for the demands ordered by another most people would not comply with those demands. It is balmy to put our scruples at ease when we are not responsible for the actions ordered by another, it is not as easy if we were to be held responsible. I believe that Milgrams article proves this to be true, not just in the experiments he conducted in the article but in modern society as well.