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The Perils Of Obedience Rhetorical Analysis

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The Perils Of Obedience Rhetorical Analysis
7 October 2013
Synthesis Over Obedience In this chapter on the research of obedience, studying the psychological actions and reactions, the implications brought forth are the surprising effects of simple commands and the subliminal influence. The articles “The Perils of Obedience”, by Stanley Milgram, and “Opinions and Social Pressure”, by Solomon E. Asch, both exhibit the traits of simple, ordinary test subjects following orders and actions by someone who is illustrated to have power or the general consensus but realistically do not. In the article, “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram, the experiment consist of two subjects, the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ but without the other subject knowing, the other is an actor. In the beginning deciding who would be the learner and who would be the teacher, the actor always got the learner and the real test subject got the teacher (Milgram 78).
If the learner got a question wrong, he would get an electric shock, but he would fake the pain to trick the teacher into believing that he or she is inflicting pain. The purpose of the experiment was to determine how long the subject would continue with the simple order to “continue please” and administer the fake electric shock knowingly causing pain to the actor (Milgram 82).
In the other article, “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon E.
…show more content…
The conformity in to society by everyone’s choices is engraved in the mind to fit in and to not disturb the status quo, such as clothing styles, behaviors, and personality traits are categorized into “cliques”. Within “Opinions and Social Pressure”, it is seen that against the better judgment of the subject, he/she still went along the popular consensus choosing the incorrect answer (Asch 144). Knowing this, it allows for us to conclude that peer pressure is shown to be more convincing than we can resist despite our best

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