Over the years, obedience has had a huge effect on human history. He has caused nations to rise and fall, to prosper and to suffer; however, it also brought destruction among innocent people. The Jewish Holocaust is one of the best publicized examples of the dangers of obedience. Hitler caused otherwise normal people to commit atrocious acts, acts that greatly reduced the number of Jews. Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, wonders to what extent a person will allow himself to be imprisoned by obeying the commands of others; Andrew Wolfson, a senior investigative reporter working for the Louisville Courier Journal, similarly discusses how a young adult was brutalized because of our nature to obey without question. This similarity is important because it reveals how Zimbardo and Wolfson view the effects of obedience. In "The Stanford Prison Experiment", Zimbardo randomly selected 21 normal males for his experiment. He randomly divided them into guards and prisoners. The prisoners were then stripped of their clothes and names. They were forced to wear aprons and given identification numbers to replace their names. Similar treatment was given to the guards: khaki uniforms, sunglasses and symbols of power. They did not receive much training and were told to maintain law and order inside the prison. They certainly did, and they were willing to abuse their power to do so. They forced prisoners to do push-ups, repeat statements over and over, turn on each other, clean bathrooms with their bare hands, and more. The guards became so brutal that one of the prisoners had an emotional breakdown and was replaced by another volunteer. The brutality continues... half of the paper... or similar but different conclusions. Zimbardo concludes by saying that we allow ourselves to be imprisoned by accepting the roles that others give us while Wolfson concludes by discussing the effects that obedience in the McDonald's hoax had on the lives of those involved. The themes of the two articles are also similar but different. The most accurate theme for these articles probably lies somewhere in the middle. Obedience can devastate and imprison the lives of those involved if used harmfully. This message combines the themes of both articles and is thoroughly described in both articles. Works Cited Wolfson, Andrew. “Really Cruel Hoax: Caller Convinced McDonald's Managers to Search a Worker.” Louisville Courier-journal October 9, 2005: 9.Zimbardo, Phillip. “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The New York Times April 8 1973: 116.