THE QUESTIONS

How can people use their power to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others?

-People with authority can control or influences others. They can control the others in different ways. For example, in Milgram obedience experiment, we can see that how people obey authority. For those who were in charged of the experiment, they easily “command" the teacher to continue their “Violence" on the learner. What they do is simply increase their tone, from “Please continue" to “You have no choice but continue". Also, they can use their power to make promises to other people. In the experiment, the person in charge make promise that test subjects won’t take any responsibility from damage he made. Because of this, most of the test subjects continue to “electric shock" the learner because they were told they don’t need to pay any responsibility. In general, People in power can either use their authority or influences to force other to do what ever he or she said, or give goods that one couldn’t refuse.  

How do people behave differently in groups then they would acting alone?

-When there is group, normally there are group think. Because of group think, decision making can only been made by a person, and this will result in poor decision making of the group. Basically, individuals of the group will listen a person with authority, and do whatever that person said. In the Milgram experiences, there was a group of three: learner, researcher and teacher. The role of researcher is to make order and give pressure on teacher (test subject) to continue the experience. The researcher are the person with authority, and teacher have to fallow what he said. This result in poor decision of teacher, he don’t question the order from researcher; what he do is obey to the research authority. 

Reference

“Milgram Obedience Study". YouTube, uploaded by liveworkcanda, 12 Dec 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVlI-_4GZQ