Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

the shocks increased in intensity, he or she began to cry out in
pain. Eventually, the learner fell silent, leading the teacher to
believe that the experiment might have resulted in death.
Each time the learner gave an incorrect answer, the authority
told the teacher to apply the shock and verbally accepted all
responsibility for the outcome. The point of the experiment
was to place obedience to authority and an obviously immoral
test subjects, 25 of 40 administered what they believed to be
the most dangerous shocks. In other words, more than 62% of
the subjects were willing to act in a way they thought might kill
another person, just because someone in authority demanded that
they do it. In experiments conducted with other populations of test
subjects, even more subjects were willing to follow orders from
the authority.
Milgram summed up his study as follows:
This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study:
ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any
particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a
terrible destructive process. Moreover … relatively few
people have the resources needed to resist authority.
In 1973, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo demonstrated
that authority does not even have to be real to be effective. In his
experiment, Zimbardo randomly assigned Stanford University
graduate students to take on the roles of prisoners or guards in a
fake prison.
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