REFLECTIONS

  THE FAMILY THAT RUNS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER                    This article was written   in 2016 and published in the Hindustan Times , Chandigarh edition.                                                                                                                                                   

  OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY EXPERIMENT          Stanley Milgram, professor of psychology at Yale University, got interested in the topic ‘obedience’ during the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann who was one of the architects of the Nazis “Final Solution” which oversaw the systematic execution of 6 million innocent jews. Like other high -profile war criminals, he too defended his actions as, ‘merely following orders of superiors.’   Milgram also, was intrigued by the acquiesce of normal German population to these mass killings. The agenda could have been set at top but the actual killings were carried out by officials down below and local population would have been aware and acceptable of such mass killings. Were they all demons or psychopaths? What conditions led people to become partner in such mass scale killings? These were the questions which Milgram wanted to test. The experiment had three participants. The ‘experimenter’ overseeing the research and two volunteers w