ABSTRACT
A central goal of Stanley Milgram's experiments was to examine the factors that lead an individual to obey— or disobey-orders from an authority, especially when the orders go against that individual are morals. Because Milgram heard that Nazi collaborators in the genocide of the Jews were "only following orders", he devised experiments to learn the extent to which ordinary people will obey orders to harm a stranger. Most importantly, Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View examines those factors that make obedience and disobedience to authority more likely. Milgram was motivated to conduct these studies by a desire to understand how the atrocities of the Holocaust could have been carried out by people who claimed that they were simply following their superiors' orders. Milgram wrote the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.
