haasa’s blog

I would like to look at authority figures enforcing obedience and abusing their powers, such as Zimbardo and Asch. I would also like to include some things on Hitler.

The Standford Prison Experiment and Asch’s experiment and Milgram’s experiment all have to do with obedience. This experiment was very unethical and got very out of hand. The prison guards pushed their authority power to the max and abused their powers. Zimbardo was also part of the experiment which gave it a biased view. We are still not very sure what Zimbardo was aiming for in this experiment, but it was handled terribly. These experiments were unethical and should not have been allowed to do this.

Both of these experiments obviously has to do with obedience and the shocking results of how obedient people are to authority figures. There are common themes here with the Holocaust and all of the genocides in the world today.

I was shocked by the results of this experiment. 60% of the subjects continued to the end, without knowing if the test subject was still alive or not. Milgram’s experiment was ethically not right, he argued with the test subjects to continue until the end, he would not let them leave, unless they physically got up and walked through the closed door. This experiment was very scary.

My definition of authority is someone above you who has the right to give orders. My definition of obedience is following orders when they are given to you.