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Stanley Milgram Experiment Essay

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Obedience is the glue that sticks people to powerful beings; it is the key factor that allows authoritative personalities to carry out control. Statistical and factual analysis of historical catastrophes, such as the events that took place in the Holocaust, point to the proposal that obedience may be an innate characteristic in humans (Milgram, 1963). However, obedience also serves the purpose of enabling structure in society, and thus, it can be beneficial. Stanley Milgram designed a study to test the true effects and significance of obedience. In other words, he aimed to investigate the extent to which innocent people would go in order to follow instructions. Essentially, the participant was assigned “teacher” and the confederate, who appeared to be another participant, was assigned “learner” in an experiment that was told to investigate the effects of punishment on incorrect memories (Milgram, 1963). Whenever the learner made a mistake, the teacher was ordered to administer shocks. Unbeknown to the teacher, the learner/confederate never received any shocks; he merely acted as though he was in pain. Milgram found …show more content…

Personally, if I were an experimenter in the study, I would go through a lengthy debriefing with the subject. First, I would inform the subject of the deception and of the necessity of it to carry out the research. I would make sure to inform the subject that he/she is not alone, in the sense that most of the subjects followed orders to the maximum voltage and all induced at least some shocks. Furthermore, I would not let the subject leave without reuniting with the learner to prove that the learner/confederate is perfectly safe. Finally, I would confirm with the subjects that they are mentally at peace with having participated in the study and make sure they forgive themselves for any harm they thought they

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In the video of the Stanley Milgram Experiment People were given roles as teachers and students. The students had been hooked up to an electrical system were they had been received questions and whenever they had answered incorrectly they received a dosage of electricity and got progressively got stronger each time they were wrong. At a certain point the student stopped responding to pain and the scientist had kept making them give a voltage. Some People discontinued the experiment.

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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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Both of the volunteers were appointed as a “Teacher” and “Learner” to study the effects of punishment and torture on learning. Learner was provided by the list of words and then he had to say the second word of a pair. Learner got electric shock from the electric chair on making errors. Shocks voltage increased as number of errors increased. This experiment was held to observe the teacher after Learner being strapped on an electric chair.

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Psychologist, Stanley Milgram, wanted to know if people would cause harm on other humans simply because they were ordered to do so (he was inspired by Nazi soldiers, who corrected their actions in World War II by saying they were just following orders). Milgram designed an experiment where participants were told they were testing a learning technique, where a student had to learn a word pattern, and were punished by electric shock if they got the answer wrong. The “student” was an assistant of Milgram’s, but the participant, who was the “teacher” and the person to give the electric shock, thought this person was just an innocent participant. The teacher would read out a question, and if the student (who sat in an adjacent room, where they

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The learner was out of sight, and not on the subject’s mind. The subject was going through the motions and doing what he was told by the experimenter because he was under the impression the experimenter knew what he was saying and no danger would come to the learner. In the Milgram Experiment, I have a few reasons why some people continued. First, I believe that the subject believed that no real danger was going to come to the learner.

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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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The first run had the learner get 3 answers correct and 7 answers wrong, resulting in a shock of 105 volts. In the second run, the teacher was told to read a list of words until the learner got the correct pair which meant that the teacher would have to increase the voltage up to 450 volts which were labeled as “Danger Severe Shock”. At around 300 volts the learner would start kicking against the wall and not respond to the teacher anymore. If the teacher failed to shock the learner the experimenter would give 4 responses that urged the teacher to administer the shock. The experimenter would either say “ Please Continue”, “The experiment requires that you continue”, “It is essential that you continue”, or finally “ You have no other choice you must go on”.

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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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The participants in the experiments actually believed they had administered painful electric shocks to another human being, and were visibly distressed throughout the experiment. Although they were not forced to stay and complete the experiment, they were consistently encouraged to keep going despite their obvious discomfort. Milgram (1974) was very careful to debrief all of the participants thoroughly, and followed up on them for some time after the experiment. Despite what many people view as a questionable ethical conduct, 83 % of the participants indicated that they were glad they had taken part in the

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The subjects in the experiment were all aware of the fact that harming others was morally wrong. As they had to electrically shock the learner, the subjects showed the symptoms of nervousness. Some subjects looked reluctant to go further with the experiment and the others criticized the research. They knew what they were doing was horrific and the learner was probably in great pain. However, the subjects were unable to defy the experimenter, or the authority.

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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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The answer would have to be yes. Obedience happens on an everyday basis. It does not happen in such a large scale like the Nazis, but it does happen. For example, in an ordinary classroom a student will choose to remain silent and listen to the instructor or he will be loud and disrespectable. The teacher can be viewed as the experimenter while the student is the subject, and an assignment can be put in the place of the learner.

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The teacher asked the learner different questions and would administer a shock if the learner answered incorrectly. The learner, however, was involved in the experiment and purposefully answered wrong thus causing the teacher to deliver what he believed to be a shock. The conductor asked the teacher to continue to ask questions and give shocks while increasing the voltage. The learner received no real harm but acted as he did. With the increased voltage each round, the learner would respond as if he was feeling the shock.

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981 Words | 4 Pages

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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Coming up with a philosophy of education is a daunting task, as it is something I question and enhance every day. As a student I wondered what the point of education was in the first place, why did I need to sit there and make a report on the ancient Egyptians or why I had to make a pamphlet about a country of my choosing. And now as a teacher I question why I am giving my students this assignment, what do they have to gain from me talking about the life cycle of a star? A quote that really spoke to me from John Dewey’s Experience and Education was “The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.”

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