There is a major dilemma in the world in which we are faced with. Obedience to Authority showed that people abandon their own morals and conform to the ideas of authority. The Holocaust is an example of this. The Germans were told by Hitler to kill the Jews, they dismissed their own morals and obeyed Hitler's commands. .
A key factor of this problem is that people have a necessity to cooperate with authority and to fulfill their orders. The mentality that these authoritative figures are more powerful and always right, leads to why people abandon their own feelings and beliefs. In Milgram's experiment, they found that "Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out."(Milgram 5) The subject will then shift his moral concern to "how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him"(8). The problem is not only that people will obey with authority, but also that they have an extreme willingness to cooperate and fulfill the expectations of the authority. .
Another major factor of this problem is that people dismiss their actions by blaming them on others. Milgram states, "The most common adjustment of thought in the obedient subject is for him to see himself as not responsible for his own actions."(7-8) They think that since someone gave them orders, it is that person's fault. And they do not think that they have control over their actions. After the experiment, subjects were asked why they continued, "a typical reply was: I wouldn't have done it by myself. I was just doing what I was told."(8) The responsibility is therefore taken away from them and projected onto others. This, in turn makes the person feel free of immoral acts and therefore they do not have any feelings of guilt. .
An additional aspect is the extreme devaluation of the victim.
