Victor Martin

Dr. Thom Young

English 101
June 3, 2015
Summary of Stanley Milgram's The Dilemma of Obedience

In The Dilemma of Obedience from his book Obedience to Authority, Stanley

Milgram claims that people choose to become obedient to authority even if their actions
are not constant with their own moral or significance.
He begins by describing the importance of obedience and how it is so powerful
that it can overthrow a persons demeanor and their values on life. In order to understand
the effects of authority on others, such as the ones on the Jews in Nazi Germany, Milgram
constructs an experiment in order to examine how much pain a regular person would
inflict on another person because they were authorized to do so. This will create some
sort of conflict between the authority and the subjects upstanding imperatives against
hurting others. The teacher will be given permission to send electric shocks to the learner
whenever they give the wrong answer. Once the intensity of the shock increases, the
learner starts to show discomfort. As a result, Milgram realizes that the teachers shocked
the learners due to a growing perception of responsibility or commitment, since they
accept themselves to the authority. Milgram designed the experiment so the subject
cannot stop shocking the learner unless they will violate the authoritys rules. Milgram
In his conclusion, Milgram perceives in his results that the nature of modern
society has led to the loss of personal responsibility. He suggests that the people have a

full response to the situation because of the type of environment they were in, along with
the type of society and how it refers to the division of labor.