Milgram's Experiment: Obedience To Authority & Group Conformity

Pain Inflicted by Authority vs Humanity

Milgram’s experiment was a fascinating thing done to a group of people resulting into more fascinating insight into the behaviors, feelings and their so called kindness. The real question of the time is to actually know and ponder upon the fact that can a common man having a decent personality can inflict pain to another person just by a command from someone in authority or not? Will he give up listening to the moral science of inner self or can risk the precious life of someone just for the heck of an experiment or by the command of a person higher in authority? The experiment was named as Obedience to Authority and yes there were mind boggling facts coming out of it.

It was quite unbelievable that 65 per cent of people went till the maximum voltage of 450 volts which was extremely and seriously dangerous for any living person. And to an awe, this is really a dreadful and villainous face of the society. Being suppressed under authority and giving a contribution into something which is definitely harmful to another person, has become a part of people’s life and they may go to dangerous levels of giving pain to another person physically or emotionally. It is really a respect for influence, a threat of authority or something has happened to this generation? It is a million dollar question.

It is widely exemplified that in this age, authority surpassed humanity when it came to inflicting pain. Pain in real sense is just not physical pain which was given in the form of electric shock, but a mental stress which lead the person analyze that everybody in the surrounding has no conscience of their own, and even if there is some kindness, it is overpowered by power of the command. When put into such a situation, people tend to act opposite as what was expected. A basic sense of humanity was expected which came out in the form of dreadful results of the experiment. Some people gave up in the name of humanity, some continued after raising doubts and some were so cold that they didn’t even think what they are doing!

Another experiment done by Sherman was a bit sigh of relief that humanity still persists in the heart of people and is just not diminished under the command of powerful personalities. It was observed that, if people were made aware of the fact that there has to be a conflict between authority and conscience, then there were results which were out were in accordance with the social ethos and moral standards and were a bit relieving for the social cause of kindness. Aware people tend to act in generous form and hence respect and go with the law of social morality and ethical behavior.

Everyone’s behavior and attitude is unique and so would be for each unique individual. In such a dilemma of kindness and cruelty which was thought empowered by authority, one would have gone with the voice of one’s soul and being sensitive would have taken a fair decision for humanity. The pain which is inflicted over other’s in any form remains in some corner of the heart throughout the lifetime and gives a constant reminder of one’s heinous deeds. Any kind of inhumane acts hovers over the mind and makes us believe that we are the culprits.

Knowledge about moral science and being socially aware about moral reflection and introspection adds on to the ethical value of an individual and helps him taking up decisions which are in the favor of mankind and humanity.

The way a person responds to the authority and acts under the influence of the authority in opposition to the conscience and inner voice is a matter of concern in today’s world which is directed towards technology, inhumanity, cold attitudes and numb feelings.

The matter of feelings is to feel the pain of mankind and listen to the actual moral sense.

I am correct, I know it, but then why is everybody going against my view? They might be right and I might not be knowing some inherent fact. Let’s go with the flow then! A correct personal view might be biased and overshadowed by the decision of the group and right answer might loose for a wrong one with the majority. This is the actual face of most of the people observed under an experiment.

The experiment of group conformity resulted into surprising facts that almost 75 per cent of people changed their answers when influenced by the group. They did not take a stand for their personal views and were guided by the decisions of the group which totally modulated their personal choices or in this case answers. The question to ponder upon is that is it really justifiable to give up individual’s stance under the pressure of the group being influenced by any reason or a mix of them?

It is generally observed that there are majorly two reasons to give up to the group’s choice. Informative theory suggests that a person changes his point of view regarding the answers of the group and pondering over the choice made by himself as wrong and believing the power of the group as topmost priority. On the other hand, normative theory is a social instinct to be a humble and acceptable part of the group with a fear that opposition might lead to disregard or seclusion. People tend to agree with the majority just a fear of not facing a ridicule or a cold views from other members. There is also a feeling of being foolish in the flock.

Human being is definitely a social animal and the inherent instinct to be a part of the society triggers a level of conformation even for the matters which might be incorrect to the inner sense. The haunting feeling of social seclusion drives the mindset of a person to surrender to the thoughts of the whole group.

The humor reflected by the experiment in which an individual gives up his sense and copies the decisions made by the group, was in actual a meaningful insight into the the ideologies and mindset of a person influenced under wrong or presumably wrong deeds. This experiment was taken up in humor but hides in some of the reality facts of the society. When a person in surrounded by many people performing some stupid task, then he tends to find some sort of sense in it and copies it for getting an entry into the group.

Dilemma of Kindness and Cruelty

An individual when conformed about his thinking and ideology must take a stand and act as a leader who is out of the crowd and who has an ideology that is self motivated and not empowered by the decisions of the group. He is the one who leads the group and not go with the flow by taking a stand for his decision and having a firm view about the correctness of the decision taken or answer thought. Conformation to the group instead of taking a right stand over a right decision is next to cowardice.

Numerous situations are prevalent which leads to modulation of decisions based over peer pressure. The group might be formed of friends or might be of strangers but a desire for inclusion forces an individual to give up his decisions in the aid of collaborative decision made by a group. Even during class activities the majority in an assigned group is regarded and followed. But it is observed that a hidden opposition against the decision of the group can be independently taken as compared to an open disregard. Moreover, in some cases if there is a person higher in authority or elder in age as a member of the group, then his decisions are given respect and are followed. Same happens when the boss takes up a decision and the employees are not competent or confident enough to raise a question which might be viable and in the benefit of the organization.

So, the combined effect of the group is likely to empower the individual decision under the term of group conformity.

Linear programming is considered as a scientific approach for decision making tasks which effectively evaluates all the possible alternatives and hence guides in taking up the best possible decision and an optimal solution for required conditions and prospective scenario. A deep role of linear programming can be observed in tasks that require re evaluation of basic structural plans. Linear programming can also give a detailed description of precise limitations of the project and all the restrictions under which the system should remain functional in order to provide optimization to the goals and requirements. During a quality decision making process, this technique also focuses over the grey areas or the potential bottlenecks, imbalances or tumbling performances by failure to adhere by constraints.

Though linear programming techniques are an edge over the conventional production techniques but, the real life scenarios cannot be handled effectively by the use of linear programming methodology. Just having a thought of stating everything specifically in a mathematical form is next to a nightmare when it comes to real life enterprise level corporate solutions. Moreover, if one is successful in stating the problem mathematically then the real challenge is to have a compete set of constraints which may be reflected in the arenas of social, financial, organizational, or institutional changes. The greatest challenge is the assumption of these problems that, relationship between inputs and outputs or production and cost are taken to be linear. However, in real life situations the truth is something really different! This is an evident of perfect competition but in actual scenario the competition is never even close to perfect. In this age of dynamism, linear programming principles takes into account only a single objective, either to maximize a value or minimize it but in real life, situations can be far different from mere maximization or minimization. If coefficients of problems are probabilistic then these practices which assume coefficient to be constant, cannot be put into practice. Linear programming generally takes in fractional values too but products or services do normally take up integer values and hence this divisibility is disregarded.

Finally, it s justified to comment that reducing the problems and situations of the world to just a simple set of some linear equations is really difficult and hence does not practically makes sense.

A rational decision making model initiates with defining the problem and identifying the criteria  which is must inflicted by linear programming principles wherein problem is mathematically formulated and constraints are defined after deep analysis.     The model then goes on to develop alternatives and after evaluations, selects the best possible choice. This is the mirror image of linear programming practices where alternatives are measured and evaluated and then finally n optimal value pertaining to maxima or minima is selected.

Linear programming principles may be used perfectly in the areas wanting to have information of product mix or in general term, for optimization. This technique is also put into practice for resource allocation, resources which are scarce or limited such as materials, labor, projects, machines, energy, capital or jobs. This technique for formulated for military logistics problems and hence nowadays it is also used in areas of management ranging form agriculture, hospitals, education, energy planning, scheduling, research and development etc.

Hence, linear programming incorporates flexibility to create an information base for optimal utilization.