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Criticims of milgram's obedience study
Summary of milgram's obedience study
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Criticims of milgram's obedience study
Summary of milgram's obedience study
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Recommended: Criticims of milgram's obedience study
In “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror”, Crispin Sartwell argues that the average citizen can be convinced to commit atrocious crimes under the right circumstances from the premise that the traits to become a genocidal killer are not that uncommon, using examples from recent history such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the Rwandan Genocide. Sartwell clarifies that although most people delude themselves into thinking that they wouldn’t partake in genocide if they were placed in a similar situation as many have before, it would take a “moral hero” (Sartwell 118) to refuse the opportunity given the circumstances. On the other hand, in “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You”, author Theodore Dalrymple claims that people's response to authority in respect to their obedience is what leads the average man to kill countless others. While both authors address the fact that it doesn’t take a malicious person to engage in genocide, Sartwell focuses more on the qualities that people who commit genocide commonly share, Dalrymple seems more concerned on how people react to authority in
Ian Parker, author of “Obedience”, provides accurate depictions of the immediate and long-term effects of Dr. Stanley Milgram’s Experiment. In addition, he includes that under complex situations, individuals are easily induced to react through a destructive manner (Parker103). Americans commonly underestimate the influences of a situation; however, Parker thoroughly delineates the consequences behind blind obedience (Parker 104). Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, authors of “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience” construe the atrocity of blind obedience committed by the United States Military. In March of 1968, crimes of obedience occurred due to an elusive order commanded by a higher ranked officer (Kelman&Hamilton 131).
The followers in Jonestown executed every task Jones asked them to, and this decreases cult member’s agency because they become less responsible for their actions. Those in Jonestown followed every order their leader commanded to please him, and this is exactly what happened in the Stanley Milgram Experiment. The American Psychological Association states, “In the middle of the jungle in Guyana, South America, nearly 1,000 people drank lethal cyanide punch or were shot to death, following the orders of their leader, Jim Jones… And when people are uncertain, they look to others for cues on what to do, research has shown.” Jones’ church members were willing to do anything for him, even kill themselves.
In “The Perils of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram describes the situation of obedience to the authority through the series of experiments of testing people and determine if they submit themselves to the authority’s orders or not. Milgram believes that obedience in many people come from their training, attitude and ethical background. This dilemma is inherited in human beings from the beginning of human race e.g. the story of Abraham, Plato’s argument. According to some conservative philosophers, society’s base or strength is being threatened by disobedience. On the other hand, Humanists think that individual’s conscience is very important for society.
Over time, the guards began to blindly follow their instructions, even if they were dehumanizing and mistreating the prisoners. The prisoners, in turn, became passive and resigned to their mistreatment. This experiment illustrates how even seemingly normal individuals can turn to evil when their individuality is compromised by societal pressure to
In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” by Stanley Milgram,
Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, shares his results from an experiment he conducted in 1963 regarding the obedience to authority in “The Perils of Obedience.” His experiment illustrates that when placed under peculiar circumstances, ordinary citizens are capable of performing terrible and unexpected actions (Milgram 85). Milgram rationalizes these proceedings by concluding that the average individual will decide to please the experimenter rather than resist his authority to protect the well-being of the learner (Milgram 86). Herbert C. Kelman, a Harvard University Social Ethics professor, and V. Lee Hamilton, a former University of Maryland Sociology chair, share of a U.S. military massacre in “The My Lai Massacre: A Military
Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.
Others circulate as traditions, archetypal stories of things to be emulated or shunned, and accepted truth about what is praiseworthy and what is culpable. All together, these form a moral world that most of the participants most of the time regard as legitimate, “natural”, and personally binding. The moral power of an army is so great that it can motivate men to get up out of a trench and step into enemy machine-gun fire. When a leader destroys the legitimacy of the army’s moral order by betraying “what’s right,” he inflicts manifold injuries on his
The Monitor on Psychology article “What makes good people do bad things?” by Melissa Dittmann analyzes the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 and discusses what the experiment can tell us about human nature and what causes humans to be evil. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” the author William Golding discusses the effects of the theories mentioned in the article by creating his own fictional experiment with children stranded on an island during a nuclear war. Throughout his novel Golding explores the focus of Dittmann’s article; that environments and situations can bring out the evil that is inside all of us. People can act good or bad depending on their environment, and these actions are not entirely their fault because when people are not held accountable for their actions their more violent natures are revealed.
We follow orders and obey rules on a day to day basis. When your mom asks you to do something, like putting the dishes away or cleaning your room you do it without thinking about it. Or how about when students sit still and be quiet all day while their teachers are teaching? It's very easy to say that humans are obedient under authorities. According to most study’s findings, most people in positions of authority are more likely to promote acts of evil and less likely to obey a sense of conscience.
Milgram himself concluded how easily ordinary people ‘can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority". (Milgram 1974) As this report has highlighted the research is not without controversy with many questioning to what extent Milgram’s experiment is true to real life and has been criticized for not highlighting further situational variables in determining obedience to authority. Regardless of this, there is no doubt Milgram highlighted a rather troubling phenomenon.
In the book Persepolis, Satrapi uses the veil to show women's rights and how she was a rebel when she was young. In the beginning of the book she tells the reader about veil and how she didn't understand why she had to wear them. As she grows up she begins to understand how the world works and adapts to growing up and saying goodbye to her childhood. The veil is closely tied to Iran religion and why women have to wear it. She soon realizes the importance of the veil as she grows up and accepts it as a part of her life.
The experiment set up at Yale University was to measure how much pain an ordinary citizen would mete out onto another person just because an authoritative direction or instruction to do so was given. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” Agency theory says that people “will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.” This idea is reinforced by some characteristics of Milgram’s evidence in his
We Ate the Acid: A Note on Psychedelic Imagery “Symbols – symbols every where. All along my journey they flashed forth the apocalypse of utterly unimagined truths.” – Fitz Hugh Ludlow Psychedelic art typically contains a number of recurring motifs. Examples include circles, spirals, eyes, concentric shapes, grids, landscapes, nudity, long hair, skeletons and mushrooms. Other common motifs are various kinds of non-human animals, vegetation, space scenery and mandalas.