22.10: Responsibility
- Page ID
- 95234
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I Was Just Following Orders
Many subjects in the Milgram experiment felt great discomfort as they delivered what they thought were increasingly powerful shocks to the learner. They would stop and convey their misgiving to the experimenter. One of the most effective ways of getting them to continue was to assure them that they were not responsible for the learner or his health.
When people don’t feel responsible for their actions, they can bring themselves to do quite terrible things. After World War II, many Germans who had worked at the death camps defended themselves with the refrain, “I was just following orders.” They were just soldiers doing what soldiers were being ordered to do; the responsibility for their actions lay elsewhere.
Asleep at the Wheel
Many of our actions result from habit. Often this is good; we can’t stop to think about everything that we do. But the habits to conform and obey make it easy to go along with things we shouldn’t, without really thinking about them. This is illustrated in a small way in the study where people asked to cut into a line to use a copying machine; it is illustrated in a much more frightening way in the Milgram experiments. One reason subjects went as far as they did in these experiments was because of a habit to obey those who seem to be legitimate authorities. We often do this almost automatically, without thinking about what we are doing. In fact, habit is one of the greatest enemies of clear and critical thinking.