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Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments

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According to Feldman (2013), obedience is the change in conduct as ordered by others. A standout amongst the most celebrated obedience study was done by Stanley Milgram in 1963. He was a psychologist at Yale University. He carried out an experiment concentrating on the altercation personal conscience and obedience towards authority (Milgram, 1963) The experiment was conducted with the assistance of 40 volunteers who were between 20-50 years of age. They were rounded up by an advertisment on the newspaper promoting male volunteers to take part in a study at Yale University. The were paid $4.50 each for their cooperation with the experiment (Milgram, 1963). The procedure was that the volunteer was assigned with someone else and they had to draw …show more content…

After he has learned the list of word pairs given to him, the ‘educator’ evaluated him by saying a word and asking the learner to recall it’s pair from the word list given to him. The educator is notified to direct an electric shock when he commits an error, increasing the voltage each time. There were 30 dials on the shock generator stamped from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (severe shock). (Milgram, 1963) According to Milgram (1963), the learner gave primarily wrong replies (intentionally) and for each of these, the educator gave him an electric shock. At the point when the educator declined to regulate a shock, the experimenter was to give an arrangement of orders/jab to guarantee they continued. There were 4 jabs and if one was not obeyed then the experimenter read out the following nudge, et cetera. Jab 1: please proceed. Jab 2: the analysis obliges you to

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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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689 Words | 3 Pages

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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1262 Words | 6 Pages

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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927 Words | 4 Pages

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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491 Words | 2 Pages

Each member of the study was to receive four dollars and fifty cents for their involvement. Milgram constructed a sinister looking shock generator, with many different shock levels starting at thirty volts, the volts escalated in fifteen-volt increments. The switches were labeled "slight shock," "moderate shock" and "danger: severe shock. " The last two switches were labeled “XXX.” The shock generator went all the way up to four hundred and fifty volts.

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1012 Words | 5 Pages

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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707 Words | 3 Pages

At the forefront of this account is Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment. The experiment saw a learner on one side of the wall and the teacher, the subject of the experiment, on the other. The subject was instructed by the experimenter to meet any wrong answers from the learner with electric shocks of increasing intensity from 15 up to 450 vaults. The subject was given a shock of 45 vaults in order to experience the intensity of the treatment. (Jones 2006:271)

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On an experiment, 2 random people were put in a room where one is strapped in a chair that has placed an electrode on his arm. Next, the teacher

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This experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and experimenter. Participants were 40 males aging between 20 and 50 whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. These regular men were assigned to either an electric chair or the controller of the chair.

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Ethical guidelines are crucial in research to minimise unnecessary physical, or psychological harm to participants in an experiment. Before ethical guidelines existed in research, several experiments were not conducted ethically. In 1963, American psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted Milgram’s Study of Obedience, which investigated participants ' obedience towards authority. The study demonstrated multiple ethical issues which proved the importance of ethics in research. This report will address the ethical principles that Milgram 's study covered poorly and how they could be modified to improve the study.

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732 Words | 3 Pages

The punishment is administered through shock generator means with switches grading to 30 that range from Sight Shock to Severe Shock: danger. The victim is a n E confederate and the study is based on the maximum shock that S can give. Twenty-six Ss complied with the commands of the experiment fully along with administering maximum shocks on the given generator. Fourteen Ss cut off the experiment at some point when the victim refused and protested to give more answers.

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950 Words | 4 Pages

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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810 Words | 4 Pages

The "teachers" continued, at the 180 volts mark the "learner" cried out that he cannot take it any longer. Once reaching 300 volts, the fifty-year-old "learner" yelled about his heart condition and begged to be released. At these points, a decent amount of "teachers" halted the experiment while a large percent continued until the final 450 volt question even though the "learner" had stopped responding. At the 150 volt mark those who were going to stop, did so. If I were in this position I would stop at the first sign of discomfort from the "learner."

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678 Words | 3 Pages

Volunteers in this experiment were assigned as ‘teachers’, and the learners were actors, however it was unknown to the volunteers at the time. Each time a learner answered the question wrong, the teacher had to electrocute them, increasing the voltage for each incorrect question. In

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1236 Words | 5 Pages

Anything is a double-edged sword and so does obedience. Obedience has many functions. Submissiveness to a authentic leader is indispensable to win a war, and also, it provides stability for a country. From another point of view, it will lead to chaos and confusions in an institution without obedience. On the contrary, submission also has some limitations.

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