The Milgram Experiment Essay

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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.
The video that we watched in class depicted …show more content…

For every pair that is incorrectly matched the voltage will go up, going all the way up to 450-volt shock. Also each time that the teacher is going to administer a shock they have to iterate the voltage amount. When the experiment begins nothing eventful occurs because the voltage levels are low. As the voltage starts going up we start to hear the learner making noises (uhg), initially the participant does not react. After it happens again we see the participant ask a question regarding the noise, but continues when instructed. When the voltage gets even higher the learner starts exclaiming about his heart condition and that he does not want to continue. After this occurs the first participant is extremely put off that the learner is complaining about his heart and he refuses to go on. When the teacher is urged on repeatedly, he states that “it is not essential for him” and disassociates himself from the experimenter and experiment. This participant is now going against the Normative Social Influence, which refers to when individuals conform because of their need to be accepted. By disassociating himself and stressing that he did not care about the experiment, the participant rejected the need to be accepted because he did not agree with the experimenter’s