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Analysis Of Stanley Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience

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Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually one with authority. If the order was never said, it is believed that the person would not have acted the way they had. From a young age everyone is taught to obey and listen to your parents, teachers, police officers, and figures on a higher hierarchy of power, or status. Stanley Milgram mentioned in his essay, The Perils of Obedience, that “Obedience is as basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to. Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living and it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands …show more content…

The learner, or victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock at all. The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will go in a situation where he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim. Milgram, during his study, noted when a conflict occurred, ”At 75 volts, he grunts; at 120 volts, he complains loudly; at 150, he demands to be released from the experiment. As the voltage increases, his protests become more vehement and emotional. At 285 volts, his response can be described only as an agonized scream. Soon thereafter, he makes no sound at all.” Although nothing is happening to the actor being “shocked,” the teacher knows they are hurting the learner only because they are answering wrong. The teacher can see that the victim, the learner, is indeed in extreme discomfort. Yet the teacher continues to shock the learner when he is wrong.They are being inhumane, but believe they are doing right because they are just told to do so. Milgram said “For the teacher, the situation quickly becomes one of gripping tension. It is not a game for him: conflict is intense obvious. The manifest suffering of the learner presses him to quit: but each time he hesitates to administer a shock, the experimenter orders him to

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