Question: Why do people defer to authority?

In the Milgram’s experiment we

noticed that the power dynamics
between professor and teacher was
that of Expertise and Reward power
and between “Teacher” and “Learner”
was that of Coercive power (Figure 1).

As seen in the experiment that 9 out of

12 teachers went all the way till 450V
even at the cost of hurting the learners.
It has been observed that most
teachers inquired about the well-being Figure 1
of the learner and upon receiving
confirmation from the professor that the impact wouldn’t be long term, teachers felt comfortable
with completing the experiment. The teachers continued with the experiment despite being under
stress themselves for three reasons:

1. Influence of Authority: Teacher even after finding that their actions may be morally wrong
still obeyed instructions as they were coming from the professor (person with authority).

2. Professor’s Influence: Teacher believed that that the professor (wearing a lab coat) has
better understanding of the scientific research and therefore followed the instructions.

3. Transfer of Responsibility: There was a display of transfer of responsibility from teacher to

professor as teacher felt that they were only following professor’s orders without accepting
the consequence of their own action.

Participants preferred to follow the instructions of the authority (expertise power, in this case) rather
than trusting their own judgement to achieve the completion of the task at hand for personal reward
and justified their action by considering their participation in the experiment as contribution towards
greater good of scientific experiment.

Therefore, we as a group can conclude that people aware of their moral doings can commit morally
wrong actions when they see the instructions are coming from an expert or figure of authority.

Assignment by:
Group No: 8
1. Bhawanshu Singh MBAEx 21/18
2. Debajyoti Hazra MBAEx 22/18
3. Namit Pandey MBAEx 36/18
4. Ridam Singhal MBAEx 51/18
5. Sreenivas Emani MBAEx 59/18
6. Surabhi Jaiswal MBAEx 69/18
7. Tapan Kumar Pradhan MBAEx 72/18
8. Vineeth Venugopal MBAEx 77/18