In the 1970s, Dr. Stanley Milgram, professor of psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, published the results of a series of experiments on the tendency of subjects to accede to authority even to the point of performing acts which they themselves considered unethical or immoral. The issue raised by Milgram and examined by him in his research is the disjunction between an individual's personal moral sense and his or her actions when performed under someone else's orders. The dichotomy is between conscience and authority. The subjects in the film performed acts under orders that they would never perform on their own, and they were able to do so without the interference of their conscience so long as conditions were such as to induce their cooperation.
Only the individual who lives in a remote area entirely alone escapes the role of social authority completely and can act only according to his or her conscience without pressure to do otherwise. The individual in a social setting who acts only according to his or her conscience will most certainly do so in a context of pressure and even coercion to act otherwise on certain occasions. Some societies enforce their strictures more directly and strenuously than do others, but all societies in some degree try to enforce conformity on members, at least in certain areas of conduct. Thus, these experiments have much to say about the social order, how it is achieved and maintained, and what this might mean to anyone concerned about the morality of government actions with or without the acquiescence of the people.
These experiments were conducted at Yale University with subjects recruited through newspaper ads. Some 40 men, ranging in age from 20 to 50 and from different socioeconomic backgrounds, participated. They were told that the purpose of the study was to examine the effects of punishment on learning, and a highly credible rationale for the study ...