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Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment

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Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment Sounds of painful scream echoed in the room. People trembled without knowing what to do. The authority just sat there reiterating with his low voice to continue. Ultimately, the cries quiet down and eventually disappeared. In the end, someone was killed. This was what happened in Stanley Milgram’s experiment in 1961 at Yale University, Connecticut. (McLeod, 2007) Milgram created an experiment to prove whether people could kill someone if they were under authority orders. To understand more about the experiment, it is necessary to know why and how it is constructed, and its implications. Milgram did not just make an experiment up randomly; he was inspired by the criminals’ actions during WWII. It was specifically …show more content…

(“Behavioral Study of Obedience,” par. 11) There were 40 males who volunteered and received $4.50 or 146.8฿ each for participating. Milgrim, then, told them that there will be another participant working with them in pairs, who was really Milgram’s confederate named Wallace. Next, they were to pick a card from a jar indicating the learner (the person who receives the shocks), or the teacher (the person who gives the shocks). However, in every trial, it was fixed that Wallace was the learner and all the other participants were the teachers. Wallace stayed in a different room and did not receive the actual shocks; he just pretends to act and made painful sounds. In this experiment, Wallace would have to answer the questions by the teacher, if he gets it wrong, the teacher would give him an electric shock which starts from 15Volts and increases each time until it reaches 400Volts. The teachers already knew beforehand that the last two dangerous zones, which are 375V and 450V, could kill the participant. Furthermore, in the same room as the teacher was an experimenter who sat just behind to notice the situation and take notes. Whenever the participants stopped or wanted to quit, the experimenter would say phrases such as “please continue”, “the experiment requires you to continue”, “it is absolutely essential that

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In the article of “The Perils of Obedience”, written by Stanley Milgram, the experimenter explains that the experiment is to see how far a person could hurt a victim in a situation where he is ordered to do so. Also, in the article “The Stanford Prison

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The student and teacher were placed in separate rooms and an instructor was placed in the same room as the teacher. He would then attempt to convince the teacher to continue the experiment even if the student starts crying out or wanting to leave. The teacher was required to “shock” the student if they said an incorrect answer. However, the ‘shocks’ became more intense and came with each incorrect answer. They eventually started getting very dangerous and potentially life threatening.

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This relates back to Of Mice and Men because of how George was under the control and being told what to do by a higher power and he had to obey even if it meant hurting somebody. A news reporter for ABC tried this experiment. In this experiment, an actor was in a different room behind a wall and the person who the experimenters brought in was behind the other side of the wall with a box containing different voltages on it. The person who was brought in for the experiment was told if the person behind the wall answered a question wrong they would have to send an electric shock to the person.

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In the experiment, Milgram uses purposeful deception as the teacher is the naive subject and is told they are participating in a memory and learner psychology experiment and are in charge of delivering shocks to the learner, who, in fact, is an actor. The majority of the participants in the study were obedient to the experimenter even though the experimenter "did not threaten the subjects with punishments such as loss of income, community ostracism or jail for failure to obey. Neither could he offer incentives" (Milgram 651). Despite having nothing to gain, the subjects continued participating in the experiment. The participants continued to administer shocks to the student because they were instructed to

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He saw that the more personal, or close, the real participant had to be to the fake one, while they were being shocked, affected the obedience as well. He also noticed that if there were two other fake participants teaching that refused to shock their learners that the real participant would not comply. Finally, he tested the experimenter telling the real patient to shock the learner by telephone, instead of actually being there in person, reduced obedience as well (McLead). The Milgram experiment and the Nuremburg trials can relate extensively to explain how the Holocaust happened the way it did.

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Like Psychologist Diana Baumrind did so in her article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments”. Where she makes it very clear that she disagrees with causing individuals stress and discomfort. In her article, Baumrind states “It is potentially harmful to a subject to commit, on the course of an experiment, acts which he himself considers unworthy, particularly when he has been entrapped into committing such acts by an individual he has reason to trust” which in this case the trustworthy individual would be Stanley Milgram. Baumrind also worried about the dangers of the serious aftereffects that may ensure because of the stress and discomfort Stanley Milgram’s experiment has caused. Even though Stanley Milgram states that “After the interview, procedures were undertaken to assure that the subject would leave the laboratory in a state of well-being.”

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On day six Zimbardo and Milgram decided to conclude the experiment. Zimbardo originally intended to explore how prisoners adapt to powerlessness, but he has contended that the experiment demonstrates how swiftly arbitrary assignment of power can lead to abuse. (Maher, The anatomy of obedience. P. 408) Once the experiment was completed Zimbardo and Milgram concluded that generally people will conform to the roles they are told to play.

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A psychologist named Stanley Milgram carried out an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience and personal conscience. Three people were involved in this experiment: a teacher, a learner and an experimenter. The learner and experimenter were actors so that it was rigged for the participant to be the teacher. In this experiment, the learner has a list of paired words where the teacher names a word, awaiting the answer to be the paired word. If incorrect, a shock is to be administered, increasing with every wrong answer to a potential of 450 volts, which could kill a human.

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While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test

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"Obedience is behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority." (King, 448) If a store manager tells you to put a shirt on before entering the store, you're more than likely going to comply due to their request due to their authority over the store. You might fear that if you do not comply, you won't be permitted inside or even police being called. That is simple obedience, but what if an authority figure asked you to inflict pain on another person?

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In the circumstances of what I would do to harm someone, it would always as I stated above about the morality. It would take a lot for me to go against myself to harm another person even if told by an authority figure, another person should never been in pain no matter, just as I gave an example of the show that did a recreation of the experiment. Milgram’s experiment should serve as a reminder that, sometimes, an authority figure’s word is not the best thing to do. This doesn’t mean we should distrust authority figures: there’s a reason they wear a uniform, and it’s because most all of them know how to best do their job. However, it should teach us to also listen to our moral compass and use our better judgement when listening to an order that may cause harm to

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In, “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably” Phillip Meyer discusses Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment and the probability of normal people electrocuting a stranger. Milgram’s experiment was originally to show that Germans were different, which would explain the Nazis and the Holocaust. However, what he found was even more shocking. Milgram discovered that most people, not just Germans, are naturally very obedient.

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The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.

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Name : Muhammed Irshad Madonna ID : 250509 Subject : Medical Ethics Due Date : 8/01/2018 Paper : 1-The Milgram Experiment The Stanley Milgram Experiment is a famous study about obedience in psychology which has been carried out by a Psychologist at the Yale University named, Stanley Milgram. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. In July 1961 the experiment was started for researching that how long a person can harm another person by obeying an instructor.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Journey Into Authoritarian Leadership Over the years, scientists, psychologists, and doctors have used social experiments to further their understanding of our surroundings. Social experiments are studies of the human mind and psyche through various environments. In this case, a social experiment called the Stanford Prison Experiment is what opened new doors for the comprehension of human behavior, how we act when we are in power, as well as offered a glimpse into the flaws in our legal system. This experiment was conducted in 1971 in Palo Alto, California.

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