Sharpen Your Mind: Authority Power

The Milgram Studies of the 1960's demonstrated that authority figures wield extraordinary power, even influencing people to act in opposition to conscience.

How strong is your conscience? Would conscience keep you from knowingly doing harm to another person? Most would answer yes. But the famous Milgram Studies demonstrated that people will act in opposition to conscience if directed to do so by an authority figure.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, performed a series of experiments with disturbing results. The subjects of the experiments were told to act as teachers in a learning and punishment experiment on others they (the real subjects) thought were the subjects of the experiment.

The fake subjects were actually actors. When the fake subjects made an error, the "teachers" were instructed to administer a shock. With each additional error the shock level was to be increased, ranging from "slight shock" to "danger: severe shock."

The fake subjects (actors) feigned pain when "shocked," but at the encouragement of an authority figure, someone dressed in a white coat and introduced as a doctor, the "teachers" continued to administer shocks, often up to the maximum danger level.

Though the academic community was appalled at Milgram's methods and his gruesome findings, these studies seem to explain the behavior of ordinary people who participate in atrocities such as the Holocaust, the My Lai massacre, and the genocide in Rwanda under the direction of authority.

For more mind sharpening material see Mind & Attitude in the index.

Source: The Intellectual Devotional, David S. Kidder & Noah D. Oppenheim