A Derivative of Milgram’s Paradigm—— Obedience to a Classroom Authority from an Asian Perspective

Abstract

This paper centers on an experiment which testifies the varying degrees to which students under distinct modes of education conform to a classroom authority from an Asian-centric perspective, a derivative of Stanley Milgram’s ex-periment on the varying degrees of obedience people exhibit when confronting with an ethical dilemma. In this study, students are categorized into four different groups based on the type of education they have so far received, and they were asked to participate in both seat-changing activities and post-experimental investigations as a means of measuring their degrees of conformity to their teachers. A 2 Samp T-Test was conducted, proving that students who come from a Gaokao-oriented education would exhibit more obedience towards an epistemic authority than their peers who have been immersed in an international education; however, evidence suggests that cultural variations do not play a significant role here. The Milgram Paradigm on the topic “Obedience to Authority” is renowned, whereas such experiments that center on education are rare, not to mention from an Asian perspective. Therefore, this paper hopefully provides a new insight into the topic “obedience, authority, and education” with an Asian focus.