10/06/2014

Today in class we started discussing the effect that people of authority can have on an individuals behavior. I thought it was very interesting how in the shock experiment ruffly %66 of the people who were tested would shock the victim until they had hit the highest voltage. They had to shock the victim every time he gave them a wrong answer. They kept going even though they knew they were hurting someone. They even continued after the person stopped yelling which meant they knew that there was something wrong. The reason why they went so far is because the experimenter overseeing everything said that he would take full responsibility if anything happened to the person. Many of the people reacted to the screams of the victim with laughter and other kinds of behaviors that indicated that they were uncomfortable with the situation. They concluded that the reason why the germans had committed the Holocaust was because they were all under a certain figure of authority which made them feel like it was okay to do so. People tend to think that they are not responsible for their actions if someone of authority tell them to do so.