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A shocking study about the power of authority and persuasion.


To better understand how we respond to a person of authority and why we keep obeying their orders even though their orders are dangerous to you and to other people, you must watch Stanley Milgram’s experiment.

A quick summary of the experiment:

  1. The experimenter monitors and instructs the teacher to recite the words on the paper.
  2. The student who sat in another room had to remember the sequence to avoid getting shocked.
  3. The teacher recites multiple words to the student.

Two outcomes:

  1. If the student’s guess is correct, they pass. The voltage will increase each session.
  2. If the student’s guess is incorrect, then the teacher will shock them.

As the experiment goes on, the starting voltage increases as it goes up to a level of at least 375+ volts.

The teacher is the principal subject of the experiment.

The good thing? It was staged, including the students. No one was hurt.

This experiment analyzed the teacher’s obedience to the authority giving orders.

Milgram discovered surprising findings and summed up his experiment:

“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 terribly destructive process.”

What’s the result of the experiment?

Of the 45 participants:

  • 5 participants stopped at 300 volts.
  • 14 participants defied the experimenter.
  • 26 participants obeyed until the end of the experiment.

Without a doubt, we can mirror those participants in our specific fields of interest. We follow because the higher-ups told us to.

It’s unbelievable how authority can persuade us to take action we never wanted. It’s in our DNA to follow orders, but sometimes denying those orders could save a life.