Is it natural to reject the idea of ​​our personal shortcomings, because those with a healthy sense of self wander about thinking about their own insufficiencies? The idea of ​​hypocrisy is one that strikes the sensitive nerves of most people, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study conducted by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, on the effects of discipline. In the essay "If Hitler asked you to electrocute a stranger, would you do it? Probably", Meyer takes a look at Milgram's study mimicking the execution of Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a number of arguments under similar conditions of stress, authority and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is to give subjects the impression of shocking an individual for answering a list of questions incorrectly, but perhaps more interesting are the results obtained from both ends of the research. Meyer's skill in this essay is to use both the logical appeal of facts and statistics and the pathetic appeal to emotion to enter the reader's mind to inform and dissuade us from our unscrupulous actions. At first Milgram believed that the idea of ​​obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was frightening. He was not satisfied with believing that all human beings were like this. Instead he tried to demonstrate that obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram set up an artificial laboratory "dungeon" into which ordinary citizens, hired for $4.50 for the experiment, would descend and be required to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for not responded to a pre-set list. of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment “is to find the level of shock at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to flip the switch” (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of ​​reluctance and doubt to the reader. At this point in the essay, you're probably thinking, "Not me. I wouldn't flip the switch once." In reality, the results of the experiment contradict this anticipatory belief. To further inform the reader using logic, Meyer provides results estimated by both the experimenter and fourteen Yale psychology majors. These hypotheses predicted a typical "bell curve" in which some subjects would stop at the beginning, most would stop somewhere in the middle, and very few would reach maximum shock voltage..