“I am Just Following Orders”

When Obedience Replaces Responsibility

© 2026. Luis A. Marrero. Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose

[Written by, with, and for human intelligence.]

Where do you observe obedience today that conflicts with basic human dignity, and what meanings allow it to persist?

Obedience to Orders as a Human Pattern

“I am just following orders.” It is a phrase most of us recognize—not because it is extreme, but because it feels familiar. I have heard it offered quietly, almost reflexively, as a way to explain actions taken under pressure. What concerns me is not the phrase itself, but what it signals: a subtle distancing from responsibility, from consequence, and sometimes from the human being affected by the action.

This phrase took on deeper significance for me when years ago I first encountered the work of Stanley Milgram (Milgram, 1963, 1974). His research did not ask whether people know right from wrong. It asked something more unsettling: what happens to ordinary people when authority reshapes the meaning of their actions?

In Milgram’s studies, participants were assigned the role of “teacher” and instructed to administer electric shocks to another person—the “learner”—whenever an incorrect answer was given. The shocks were delivered through a panel of thirty switches, each labeled with increasing voltage levels, from mild to severe. With each mistake, the teacher was told to move to the next switch. An authority figure, the experimenter, stood nearby, calmly insisting that the procedure continue. The learner was not dangerous or threatening. He was presented as dependent and vulnerable, increasingly protesting, pleading, and eventually falling silent. (For your peace of mind, unbeknown to the subject, the “victim” was an actor and was not being jolted with electric current.)

What Milgram’s experiments revealed was not a lack of conscience, but how easily conscience can be redirected. Many participants hesitated, questioned the authority, and showed visible distress. Some protested openly. Yet a majority continued to the highest shock levels when assured that responsibility lay with the experimenter. Obedience did not require cruelty. It required a shift in meaning—away from seeing oneself as a moral agent, and toward seeing oneself as an instrument carrying out another’s will.

When Meaning Shifts, Conscience Follows

What makes these findings difficult to sit with is not cruelty, but its absence. Most participants were not indifferent. They questioned the process, expressed discomfort, and showed concern. Yet many continued when reassured that responsibility rested elsewhere.

Milgram captured this tension in a moral principle that few would dispute: “One should not inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor threatening.” (Milgram, 1974, p. 13) The significance of his work lies in how easily this principle can be set aside—not rejected, but overridden.

What occurred was not a failure of feeling, but a shift in meaning. Participants gradually reinterpreted their actions. The shocks became “part of the experiment.” The person became “the subject.” Harm was reframed as procedure, and conscience was absorbed into role.

"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority." ~ S. Milgram

Attribution, Distance, and the Risk of Dehumanization

This is where Meaningful Purpose Psychology’s (MPP) attribution becomes critical. When we begin to see others not as persons, but as cases, violations, numbers, or problems to be managed, distance is created. Dehumanization rarely begins with hostility. More often, it begins with subtle changes in how we explain who the other is.

At the same time, values – our moral compass -- are not erased. They and our conscience are suspended. Participants still believed that harming others was wrong, but that belief was temporarily subordinated to obedience. Responsibility was displaced. The internal question shifted from “Is this right?” to “Is this expected of me?”

Why This Pattern Has Not Disappeared

It would be easy to treat Milgram’s findings as belonging to another time, for instance, Nazi Germany. Yet similar patterns can still be observed across institutions and social systems today. Individuals may carry out actions that conflict with basic norms of decency, not out of malice, but because their role has come to define what feels permissible. When responsibility narrows to “doing one’s job,” moral discernment quietly recedes.

"This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." ~ S. Milgram

It is tempting to believe that you or I would never act this way. Milgram’s work invites a humbler posture. Under conditions of pressure, authority, and role expectation, confidence in our moral immunity may be less protective than we assume.

When Meaning Quality Breaks Down

From a meaning perspective, this represents a breakdown in quality. Situations are interpreted narrowly. Awareness contracts. Values come into conflict with action. Internal harmony erodes. People experience distress, yet lack the clarity or grounding needed to realign what they are doing with what they believe.

This helps explain why distress alone does not prevent harm. Feeling that something is wrong is not the same as understanding why it is wrong or reclaiming responsibility for one’s participation in it. Without meaning clarity, discomfort is endured rather than acted upon.

Philip Zimbardo: "After the final 450 volt switch was thrown, how many of the participant-teachers spontaneously got out of their seats and went to inquire about the condition of their learner?"

Milgram: "Not one, not ever!"

When meaning collapses in this way, the MPP’s Path to a Meaningful Purpose collapses with it. Prosocial concern gives way to role-based distance. Peace and psychological safety are replaced by fear of consequence. Wellbeing erodes into moral injury. Engagement becomes mechanical. Even prosperity loses its grounding.

Building Meaning Quality Before Pressure Arrives

Milgram’s work does not invite us to judge others. It invites us to examine the meaning structures that shape our own choices—especially under pressure. If we assume we are immune to such dynamics, we may overlook the very conditions that make unintended harm possible.

At the Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose, we approach this work with a simple conviction: if meaning shapes action, then learning to work with meaning is not optional. It is how we cultivate awareness, ethical clarity, and responsibility—particularly when circumstances make them hardest to sustain. If we want different outcomes, we must begin where choices are formed: with meaning.

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References

• Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose. (n.d.). Blog. https://www.bostonimp.com/blog

• Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64(1), 1–11.https://doi.org/10.1037/a0010932

• Marrero, L. A. (2024). When outcomes disappoint: Why meaning matters more than we think. Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose. https://www.bostonimp.com/post/when-outcomes-disappoint-why-meaning-matters-more-than-we-think

• Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378.https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525

• Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York, NY: Harper & Row.