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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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