The effect of the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority at work.

The effect of the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority at work.

 According to Charles Stangor (2011), Social power is the ability of one’s own actions, feelings and thoughts to influence others. Some people tend to have greater influence in social interactions than others. For example, bosses have more power than their employees, and parents have more power than their children. In short, we can say that superiors have more power than subordinates.

Stanley Milgram (1963) conducted a series of excellent studies that proved the powerful ability of authority to control others as well as the factors that make people obey the orders of those in power. In his designed experiment, he was able to observe the extent to which people were able to obey or cause harm to others (Steve McCartney and Rick Parent, 2015).

The method of the experiment has been criticized in many ways, for example, shortage of informed consent, controversial cheating, and the harm to participants. It must be noted that Milgram’s standards for conducting experiments at that time were quite different from today’s standards. In spite of this, the experiments still caused harm to patients, which was also a concern at the time. In addition, the results showed a noteworthy rate of obedience (Soesja R, Vogels., ‎2014).

But it is the disturbing results of Milgram experiment that made the experiment famous and aroused people’s interest in this method (Soesja R, Vogels, ‎2014). Before Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority, there might have been many experiments involving unethical methods, but they were simply ignored because their results and conclusions were not particularly important. There are now ethical guidelines for conducting scientific research on the human body to prevent unethical or controversial research. These guidelines are published in the Helsinki declaration and other documents to protect the health of individuals participating in the study and have the right to know about relevant experiments.

As for the obedience to authority at work, Bernard Oladosu Omisore (2014) argues that every organization is neither a rational and harmonious entity nor a stage for class conflict. It must guard against the negative effects of coercion power and organizational politics. To maintain the prosperity of an organization, it is necessary to follow departmental interests to reduce setbacks, frictions and conflicts.

Number of words: 366

References:

1. Augustine Brannigan. 2013.Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: A Report Card 50 Years Later. Society.
2. Bernard Oladosu Omisore. 2014. The Influence of Power and Politics in Organizations. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
3. Charles Stangor.2011.Principles of Social Psychology – 1st International Edition. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
4. Darley, John M. 1995. Constructive and destructive obedience: a taxonomy of principal-agent relationships. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 51, No. 3: 125-154.
5. Haslam Nick, Loughnan Steve, Perry Gina. 2014. Meta-milgram: An empirical synthesis of the obedience experiments. PLoS .
6. Milgram, Stanley.1974. Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper.
7. Richard A, Griggs. 2016. Milgram’s Obedience Study: A Contentious Classic Reinterpreted. Teaching of Psychology.
8. Stephen Gibson. 2011. Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis.  British Journal of Social Psychology.
9.  Soesja R, Vogels.  ‎2014 .The Milgram experiment: Its impact and interpretation. Social Cosmos – URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-116042.
10. Steve McCartney and Rick Parent.2015.Ethics in Law Enforcement. Creative Commons Attribution

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