In Shepherdsville, Kentucky, 21 years-old Louise Ogborn sued McDonald’s for failing to warn employers and employees about a hoax. Louise Ogborn was an employee of a local McDonald’s restaurant in Shepherdsville. On April 9, 2004, the assistant manager Donna Summers received a phone call from David Stewart, who claimed to be a police officer. The caller accused Ogborn of stealing and ordered Summers to strip search the employee. At one point, Summers had to leave and so she asked her fiancée, Walter Nix Jr., to continue the search. During the search, Ogborn was threatened to perform many sexual acts on both Nix and herself. After this incident, Nix was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison while Summers was fired.
The obedience theory became about when a psychologist, Stanley Milgram, experimented to see in what types of situations people were most likely to obey. The experiment consisted of a participant, a confederate/actor, and a scientist. The participant would teach a list of randomly paired words to the actor. If the actor failed to remember the correct pairs, he was given a shock. As the actors answered incorrectly more, the stronger the shock became. Many different situations were tested, one of which proving that people obey when there is a presence of authority.
Similar to the experiment, both Summers and Nix obeyed Stewart because of his false proclaim of being an authoritative figure. Though the two knew the act they were committing was wrong, they continued to obey the caller because he was an authority. Without the proper explanation of the obedience theory, there would be many questions concerning the morality of Summers and Nix. Due to the theory, however, it became possible to understand why an event such as this occurred.
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