Milgrams experiments involved the testing of a vast number of individuals. In his experiments, subjects were brought into a lab, at the Yale University campus in the summer of 1961. Two volunteers were assigned specific roles. One was to be a “learner” and the other a “teacher.”

The teacher would give the learner word groupings, and the learner was instructed to respond appropriately. When the learner gave an incorrect answer, the teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock to the learner, in increasing increments of fifteen volts. In reality, the learner was actually part of the experiment, and gave predetermined answers to the teachers. The learner was never actually shocked, or harmed in any way.

In 65% of cases, the teacher would go on to administer the greatest level of voltage, even with visual reminders of the danger of the shocks, such as “Danger: Severe Shock” or “XXX”. Even when Milgram changed certain controlled aspects of the experiment, the results remained relatively the same. The implications of these findings created quite a stir for society at large. More important, though, are the implications within the military community. Obedience to authority had not been previously thought to be dangerous.

Webster’s dictionary defines authority in several ways. One is “An expert whose views are taken as definitive” (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org). Anyone serving in the military knows however, that many people who are in positions of authority are not experts in a given field. In many circumstances, an officer will be assigned to a division without having any knowledge of what their subordinates do. They are responsible for the work that they do, without understanding the actual labor involved; many times, the one held ultimately responsible has to lean on the knowledge and expertise of the people who work beneath them. As Lt. Colonel Kenneth Wenker says, “the authority is not necessarily an expert and does not necessarily have better judgment, knowledge, or experience.”

A definition more relevant to the military comes from Cf. Brian Barry, “What makes one an authority is the fact that his decisions become societal decisions. The commander of a military unit in the United States armed forces is an authority because his decisions, within societally [sic] (i.e., legally) established limits, are accepted by the citizenry as a whole as society’s decisions concerning the specific military unit.” Therefore, because the military society gives an individual his or her authority, a subordinate would not have to follow an immoral order from the authority because that subordinate is a part of that military society who gives authority.

Based on this definition of authority, the moral responsibility rests on the military member who is asked to carry out an order. The Nuremburg trials “tried to establish legal accountability for the aggression and violations of human dignity,” The consensus of the judges were that each individual is morally accountable for their own actions, regardless of the authority of the person who gives the order.

Obedience is another word which has special implications for the military. In the Armed Forces, people who are placed in positions of authority want obedience without question. Webster’s defines obedience as, “dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person” (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org). This is especially true for those serving in the military.

When tying to define obedience for the military, one must consider that to obey, one must first have an authority figure to obey. Obedience comes by first believing that an authority exists. Once that is established, then we can see that obedience is directly related to the value given to the authority. In the military, authority figures are given great value, and must be obeyed, a fact which is permanently ingrained in young recruits minds.

However, because the military society gives an individual his or her authority, then the choice of obedience rests ultimately with the subordinate. The subordinate has to make the choice to obey or not to obey the authority, based on moral judgments that the subordinate must make. The fault for obeying an unlawful order would ultimately rest with the subordinate, as would the responsibility for disobeying a lawful order.

It is important for each person, especially within the military community to determine what is right and what is wrong, or thier morals. The best way to go about understanding right actions and wrong actions are for a person to ask themselves, “Would I want this to happen to me?” Or, “Does the good outweigh the bad?” If the answer to both questions is, “No” then it can be concluded that it would be a wrong action, and subordinates should act based on those conclusions.

Throughout history, there are examples where people have followed authority and sacrificed their own moral codes. The Mai Lai massacre, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, these are all examples of instances where people have obeyed authority without questioning the morality of their actions. More recently, we have the Abu Ghraib scandal, where prisoners were tortured, an order which came from an authority figure. At any time, one of them could have stopped what they were doing, but they made the choice to blindly follow the authority which was placed over them.

By defining the seemingly ambiguous terms “authority” and “obedience” we can see that even with the results of the Milgram obedience experiments, it is clear that the subordinate has control of their actions, as 35% of the subjects tested did not follow their “authority” figures to the end, they chose to follow their own morals. The fault for doing immoral acts would rest with the subordinate, whether or not an order came from an authority figure.

It is important to change how these words are defined in terms of the military, in order to change a soldier’s perspective of following military authority. Now that we understand how these words work in the military, we need to work on changing them to so that soldier’s will better understand the balance between following orders, and following their own moral compass. Only when these changes are made, and understood, can we rest easy truly believing that our military can and will make the right decisions.

The shock generator is a horizontal switch with voltage designations ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The subject is told to administer a shock to the learner each time he gives a wrong response. The subject is also asked to move one level up each time. After the 300 level shock, the learner pounds on the wall and in the case of no response the subject normally turns to the experimenter who tells the subject to take it as a wrong response and administer a shock. The experimenter feedback was used if subjects did not want to go on. There were in a sequence of “prods”. A subject who does not go through completely with the experiment is called a defiant subject and someone who proceeds to administer all shock levels is an obedient subject. The results of the experiment show that most people thought the experiment was real and in the post experimental interviews the subject rated mostly that the most potent shocks were extremely painful to the learner. A lot of subjects were nervous about administering large shocks. Some even broke into fits of nervous laughter which seemed bizarre and out of place. Overall, some subjects refused to go beyond a certain level whereas some defied the experiment right from the start.

However, some people did administer potent shocks, 26 obeyed the orders till the end out of the 40 subjects. Most of the people were stressed about administering shocks. The results show that it is moralistically wrong to hurt other people but in the face of authority 26 people administered severe shocks. The people carrying out the experiment were also shocked with the display of obedience. The variables like proximity to the victim affected the subjects as well. Another effect was the extraordinary tension generated by the procedures. Even though the subjects would not have been punished for failure to continue with the experiment, most of them still chose to continue, even while under great emotional stress.

Stanley Milgram in his experiment shows that in the face of an authority people are willingly to go to extents that they may not otherwise. Even though it may be against our moral values which we have been brought up with. It looks like in this experiment authority superseded the moral beliefs, however, we should be careful about making hasty generalizations. Although the experiment shows that people were willing to administer severe shocks, it does not mean that generally authority has such an effect on most people put in such situations because a study of 40 people is not conclusive. The people were also deceived hence we cannot ever be sure how they would have acted if they had more knowledge. However, the example of concentration camps and other such numerous examples in history show that people tend to obey to authority. The variables like the proximity to the learner also played a huge part in the experiment, the effect of such variables has not been completely considered

It is an important study on human behavior and obedience and shows that people tend to obey in the face of an authority because somehow the responsibility seems to shift from them to the experimenter. However, the experiment should not be used to come up with a universal principle applicable to all people.