Paper Summary:

The paper shows that both "The Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram and the "Stanford Prison Experiment" by Philip Zimbardo essentially demonstrate the potential for "evil" in ordinary citizens when placed in situations where stark authority is pitted against the individual's own moral imperatives (Milgram) or when deindividuated potential perpetrators are given total power over powerless victims (Zimbardo). The paper shows that although the experiments differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim.

From the Paper:

"There were several common ethical issues thrown up by both experiments. As Zimbardo says, "The line between Good and Evil lies in the center of every human heart "not in some abstract moral, celestial space" " (Sonoma State University Web site) Similarly, Milgram observes, "Conservative philosophers argue that the very fabric of society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the primacy of the individual conscience." (Vanguard University Web site) Therefore, the same issue of ethics as in "the individual conscience" is at the heart of both experiments on human psychology."

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