What if you were ordered to inflict pain on someone to the point of killing them, would you do it because you were ordered or refuse the order? According to Robert Lee "Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character." People comply with authority as a gesture of respect and trust, whether it is respect for the law/leadership or for someone. In today's society, people do things to prove that they are "man enough" to go through them. They also say the expression "I've got it in me," when commanded or asked to do things that are inhumane and immoral. Stanley Milgram conducted the behavioral study of obedience with the struggle between obedience to authority and self-conscience being the focal point of his experiment. Milgram conducted the experiment to investigate why people do things that are immoral and against their personal conscience because of obedience to authority. The subjects were 40 men between the ages of 20 and 50, drawn from New Haven and the surrounding communities through a newspaper advertisement and direct mail solicitation (Milgram, 1963). Milgram conducted the experiment to learn how far people can go when told to do something even when it is against their morality. Each participant took the role of a teacher to administer shocks to the learner ranging from 15 to 450 volts, every time the learner gets an answer wrong. Even though most participants showed signs of extreme tension and nervousness, 26 participants obeyed the orders to punish the victim until they reach the most potent shock available, and 14 participants disobeyed the experimenter's orders to continue the punishment (Milgram, 1963).
Milgram's experiment is widely popular and known around the world. It had a great impact on social psychology and explained the participation of thousands of Germans in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Though the experiment had great recognition and significance, there are some flaws in S.