If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably

It is only natural to dismiss the idea of our own personal flaws, for who with a healthy sense of self wanders in thoughts of their own insufficiency? The idea of hypocrisy is one that strikes a sensitive nerve to most, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study done by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, involving the effects of discipline. In the essay, “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably”, Meyer takes a look at Milgram’s study that mimics the execution of the Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a series of subjects under similar conditions of stress, authority, and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is giving subjects the impression that they are shocking an individual for incorrectly answering a list of questions, but perhaps more interesting is the results that occur from both ends of the research. Meyer’s skill in this essay is using both the logical appeal of facts and statistics as well as the pathetic appeal to emotion to get inside the reader’s mind in order to inform and dissuade us about our own unscrupulous actions.

At first Milgram believed that the idea of obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was appalling. He was not satisfied believing that all humans were like this. Instead, he sought to prove that the obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram staged an artificial laboratory “dungeon” in which ordinary citizens, whom he hired at $4.50 for the experiment, would come down and be required to deliver an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for failing to answer a preset list of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment “is to find the shock level at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to pull the switch” (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of reluctance and doubt within the reader. By this point in the essay, one is probably thinking to themselves, “Not me. I wouldn’t pull the switch even once.” In actuality, the results of the experiment contradict this forerunning belief.

To further inform the reader using the logical appeal, Meyer gives the estimated results by both the experimenter and fourteen Yale psychology majors. These hypotheses predicted a typical “bell curve” in which a few subjects would cease in the beginning, most would break off somewhere in the middle, and very few would go to the max voltage of shock. Meyer also throws intermittent information into the essay, stating that before the actual experiment, Milgram ran a pilot experiment using Yale students as subjects. “Each of them pushed the shock switches,” Meyer informs, “one by one, all the way to the end of the board” (242). Not only does this statement put doubt of the reader’s preceding thoughts of denial using the pathetic appeal of rhetoric, he also gives the information so that one can come to his or her own conclusions about humanity and obedience in general.

Milgram was shocked at the results. As a variable, he altered the experiment to “include some protests from the learner [shockee]” (242); and as a result, nothing seemed to change. Much to the experimenter’s dismay. “‘Obedience would be much greater than we had assumed’” Meyer documents Milgram (242). Meyer describes the situation as becoming “rather macabre” (242), appealing to the reader’s emotion by conveying the cruelty of the experiment and pain of the subjects involved. Furthermore, the reader begins to develop a sense of disgust for the “teacher” or shocker of the experiment for failing to disobey the experimenter. Combining even more pathos with logic