I'm sure you were raised to listen to and respect authority.  Most Americans were.   So much so that psychologist Stanley Milgram devised the "Milgrim experiment."   I cannot summarize it sufficiently here, but Milgram was attempting to study the effect of authority figures on ordinary people from all walks of life.   This was in the 60s when the Eichmann trial was international news, and the question of how Nazi Germany could have occurred was questioned by most people in the world.  

Milgram didn't express his conclusions in the exact way I do, but essentially the Milgram experiment proved that 2 out of every 3 people will kill someone they know nothing about just because another person they know nothing about told them to, if the third party appeared to authoritative, i.e., wore a white coat, made notes and directed the experiment. 

I think that experiment is one of the most compelling ever.