Question

The social psychologist who is best known for his controversial series of studies investigating obedience to authority is:

Answer 1

Answer: Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)

Explanation:

Stanley Milgram lived between 1933-1984. He was best known for his experiment that centered on "Obedience to authority" which he conducted in 1960 when he was having his professorship at Harvard University in social psychology. His experiment was affected by the happening of event during the holocaust, most notably when Adolf Eichmann was being tried.

Stanley Milgram is one of the major personality in the history of social psychology.

Answer 2

Answer:    Stanley Milgram

Explanation:  As Stanley Milgram himself stated, the essence of obedience to authority is when a person begins to perceive himself as a tool to fulfil the wishes of the authority, not his own wishes, so he sees all his actions and consequences of these actions as a result of the action of authority, not as a result of his will and responsibility. Milgram based his experiment on the conflict that arises between the state of obedience and the conscience of a person who subordinated to authority. The essence of the experiment concerned the responsibility of those who committed genocide during WWII, who claimed to have been merely obedient, i.e executing the orders of superiors, and based their defense on this claim. This begs the question of whether or not they were complicit in the genocide.

The experiment was performed with pairs of participants where one was a "student" and the other was a "teacher", and where the student was connected to an electroshock electrode. Each time a student would give a wrong answer, the teacher would activate electricity through the electrodes and the student would experience an electric shock. With each wrong answer, the teacher would increase the level of electric shock. There are also some moderation in the experiment, such as a student would make a mistake on purpose, etc.

The conclusion is that ordinary people are generally willing to kill people, even if they are innocent in order to execute the orders of superiors, recognised as authority. It is considered that when it comes to authority, all its orders are justified and legal. So it is moral and proper to follow the orders of authority, whatever it may be.