Chapter Fifteen

Social Psychology is a very broad topic that has many interesting parts to it. What I think is the most fascinating is people's responses to authority. Milgram's experiment is scary to me, I'm sure that none of those people would be labeled murders or sociopaths, and yet there were a good number of them who killed people just because they felt that they felt assured that nothing bad would happen since it was experiment at Yale. I don't have any experience with something of this magnitude myself, and honestly I'm not sure how I would react in that situation. I would like to believe that I would stop, and I do honestly believe that I would. I have never had to deal with an authoritative figure abusing power. It seems like an easy concept to just say no to the person, or too question them, but I know that I usually just obey a teacher, police officer, or anyone else with that type of authority over me, and most people do as well. I don't think that this should change standards though, people should still be held responsible for their actions. I think the key is to teach people to think for themselves more, but I'm not really sure how it should be taught since it is a tough subject and a very fine line. However, there are many incidents such as Watergate, Enron, and the Nazis in World War II where a lot of bad things could have been prevented if people thought for themselves more.