Over 50% of those studied ended up using the full amount of electricity on their victims. This suggests that when the authority is present, the participants can rationalize that they didn't perform the task directly, bur only assisted it. The level of obedience is almost total. This is because the participants believe these cruel decisions are not their responsibility anymore. When there's no interaction between the participants and the victim, the level of obedience is higher than ever. In this experiment, the victim was out of sight of the subject. However, the level of obedience would decrease when there was visual and voice feedback from the victim. The obedience would drop even lower if there was a physical contact between the participants and the victims (Ordinary Men, 172). .
During the experiment, the participants became nervous; they began questioning the authority who told them to go on and that he was the one taking all the responsibility for the participant's action. This persuaded many people to go on feeling obligated to follow authority even though they knew they were doing something morally wrong. There were a lot of signs that the participants were nervous. They moved their hands frequently, kept asking questions for reassurance, and tried to give the electric shock faster so the victim would not feel the pain. Despite their signs of nervousness, they still carried on the experiment. However, that was not the only choice that they were given. The participants could choose to walk out of the experiment, but many did not do so, even though the consequences of disobeying were not stated clearly except that the scientist did mention, " It's essentials for you to continue the experiment- (Milgram's experiment). This raises a controversial question about the degree to which we are influenced by the environment in which we live. Most of the participants followed through to the end of the experiment once the scientist said that they were free of responsibilities.
