Title (psychology #7) In the Abu Ghraib Torture and the Milgram experiment even though they had different reasoning behind it, the same concept is behind it. The obedience to authority people tend to have is either to obey or disobey authority and do what they think is right. In both this situation many people decided to obey authority and break their morals.
The School of Shock by Jennifer Gonnerman is an article that was posted on a political blog, Mother Jones, on August 20, 2007. The article outlines the disturbing details of a behavior modification facility for severe special needs children and adults in Canton, Massachusetts. The facility, known as the Judge Rotenberg Center, uses shock-devices or “applications” from a “Graduated Electronic Decelerator” (GED) as “aversion therapy” for unfavorable behavior. The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) was founded by Dr. Matt Israel, Ph.D. to serve patients with extreme behavioral disorders without the use of medications or psychiatric therapy. Dr. Israel’s concept is that after repeated shocks, students will cease their bad behaviors, however, JRC is the only facility in the United States of America to uphold these practices.
In Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture”, he uses many cases of emotional appeal to persuade the reader that torture is necessary in extreme cases. There are many terms/statements that stick with the reader throughout the essay so that they will have more attachment to what is being said. Levin is particularly leaning to an audience based in the United States because he uses an allusion to reference an event that happened within the states and will better relate to the people that were impacted by it. The emotional appeals used in this essay are used for the purpose of persuading the reader to agree that in extreme instances torture is necessary and the United States should begin considering it as a tactic for future cases of extremity. One major eye catching factor of this essay is the repetitive use of words that imply certain stigmas.
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.
In the last five pages of “The Shock Doctrine”, Klein (2007) explores the connection between the destruction of minds in pursuance of perfection and the destruction of Iraq in order to create an ideal country. Klein begins by focusing on several American prisons in which electroshock therapy and intense sensory deprivation is administered to prisoners regularly. “For many prisoners, the effects of these techniques have been: […] total regression” expressed as a “permanently delusional“ state (Klein pg. .51). The purpose of this regression, as Klein (2007) previously explains at the end of the chapter, is to erase all traces of the people these prisoners once were and to use that as a means of remaking them into model citizens. An idea perpetuated
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.”
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.
In discussions of torture, one controversial issue has been whether torture is an effective mean to gain information from terrorists. On the one hand, many people would argue that torture is a very effective mean to gain information. On the other hand, there is a large amount of people who contends that torture is not the only means to gain the same information. My own view is that there are better ways to gain information from terrorists other than torturing them. I disagree with torture being an effective mean to gain information because; as recent research has shown it can be ineffective.
Human experimentation can be extensively characterized as anything done to a person to figure out how it will influence him. Its principle target is the procurement of new exploratory information instead of treatment. In the event that a trial is at last advantageous to others or even to the subject himself, this doesn't imply that treatment filled a critical need. Humans have long been used as subjects for a variety of experiments.
The shock started from 15 volts and increased by 15 per wrong answer up a maximum shock of 450 volts (Milgram Experiment-Obedience to Authority, 2015). In Milgram’s first experiment, fifteen out of the forty participants refused to continue at some point in the experiment, while 25 participants continued all the way to 450 volts, “shocking” the learner three times before the acting scientist ended the experiment. The teachers, however, did not know that there were no shocks and the procedure was perfectly safe. To sell the fact that the learners were hurt, the scientist would bring out the acting learner whose face was “covered in tears and looked haggard” to meet one of the participants, Joseph Dimow. The actor “thanked” him for stopping the experiment and noted the anticipation was worse than the shock
The Stanford Prison Experiment has a connection to this tale. Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo started the experiment to see whether a person's surroundings impact their emotions and whether they would negatively alter themselves. 24 volunteers were selected for the experiment, they randomly assigned of which 12 were as guards and 12 as convicts. Day 1 was simple, but On the second day, however, when the prisoners rebelled against the guards because of the persecution, human psychology displayed its true colors. The guards tortured these inmates by forcing them to repeatedly apologize for their error and abuse them by gassing them with CO2 in their cells.
He was preaching in the Germanic states to the gullible crowds. He took it a step further by persuading the people that “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs,” meaning that if they purchased an indulgence, their relatives would be immediately freed from the suffering in Purgatory. Indulgences were a chief reason as to why Luther nailed his ‘95 Theses’ onto the Wittenberg Cathedral. Theses 51. “Christians should be taught that, as it would be the duty, so it would be the wish of the Pope, even to sell, if necessary, the Basilica of St. Peter, and to give of his own money to very many of those from whom the preachers of pardons [indulgences] extract money.
Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.
Torture is defined as an act of causing severe physical pain as a form of punishment or as a way to force someone to do or say something. Hence why torture is seen as illiberal in America, it’s not reconcilable with American values. The case of “the Girl in the Closet” is an example of how torture effects an individual physically and mentally. Therefore, within this case, investigators believed that the abusive mother failed to protect her own child as a result she tortured the child. Though victor’s pleasure, terror, punishment, and extracting confessions are seen as illiberal, they are occurring factors to torture.
that the individual had committed. Overtime, public torture began to be marked by celebrations and huge crowds. The number of women who were considered as the most delicate of the human species, began to grow in leaps and bounds. The act had lost its initial ‘shock factor’. The feeling of fear that was supposed to prevent future crimes was lost.
