ible for the actions. This is a very intriguing question which this paper addresses.
There are situations which provide evidence in both directions. On the one hand, some people have acted in conformity with authority in which there was no personal danger to them, such as the Nazi death camps. The prisoners were helpless and the cadres were in charge. Yet, the cadres mass murdered thousands of people on the command of the Nazi regime. Moreover, even the victims compliantly obeyed the Nazi commanders. This, however, can be explained by the fact that the victims had no knowledge of what was in store for them. So, their interest was a false assumption of self-preservation.
The same pattern occurred in the killing fields of Cambodia. In this case, ordinary citizens were instructed by authorities to kill a list of "undesirables". We can question whether these Cambodian citizens were acting on the basis of fear of retribution from the Khymer Rouge, and that their own lives would be in jeopardy if they refused. We can also regard them as simply disowning the actions which they felt forced to take, and as not of their own doing.
Another good example of a case in which people yielded to authority when there was no threat of sanction is in the Stanley Milgram experiments. A preeminent authority in this field of research, St
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