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The Milgram Experiment

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The Milgram experiment and the society Speaking of one of the most renowned psychological experiment, which even replications on TV are done, is the Milgram experiment, on obedience to authority figures. It involves the measurement of how much participants will to obey the authority, in order to explain the reason why soldiers obeyed to allow the Holocaust, the homicides of millions of Jews, happened. With the participants’ roles as a teacher to punish a learner by incrementing degrees of electric shocks, though they didn’t know it’s staged, 65% of them did it to the last under the horrendous moans and the commands of the experimenters, which surpassed the expectation of 1.2%. Milgram himself elaborated two theories, encompassing theory of
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The study measures the willingness of ordinary individuals to adhere to an authority figure who told them to commit acts on another individual which may conflict with their personal morals. The experiment found that 65% of the individuals completely obeyed the authority figure and made it through to inflict the final shock of 450 volts on another human being for an incorrect answer. These findings shocked me and led me to believe that it would have been entirely possible for a seemingly ordinary person such as myself to commit horrible acts against another person if I was instructed to do so. I sincerely hope that through being educated on such experiments and the holocaust itself, I would now have the strength to stand up for what I morally believe in and refuse any order outside of my

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Milgrams study of obedience is about the tendency to conform to authority Milgram uses a doctor in a lab coat to represent authority and used volunteer subjects to shock another subject if they do not repeat three word correctly it can be compared to the villagers in Barrnetts article because Milgrams study showed that over 50% of the test subjects are willing to do what the authority the doctor in this case instructions or commands. It was proven on how far they went in shocking the other subject with the highest setting on the shocking device. The same can be linked on what the Nazi’s did to the villagers in Muanchaussen with the swift and decisive ways they took care of protesters made the Nazi’s the authority and must be adhered too in any case. And that even if people know it is wrong they still listen to the authority this is the case with the employees like the doctors and nurses also including the maintenance man working in the euthanasia camp they continue to do what they are told to do even when they know what is happening is

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After reading multiple sources, it is clear that people tend to blindly listen to authority figures, which leads to dehumanization. Proof that blindly listening to authority figures leads to dehumanization shows in the Milgram Experiment by Saul McLeod on paragraph 15 when it says "Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by authority figures even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Basically, McLeod is saying that it is our human nature to listen to authority. When it says "killing an innocent human" and "ordinary people are likely to follow orders" we can see that people are listening to authority figures. This proves that blindly listening to authority leads to dehumanization because they aren't looking at the subject

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The Milgram experiment was an experiment that tested an individual's willingness to follow the instructions of an authority figure. Subjects were told to shock a person, who they believed to also be a subject, if they answered a question wrong. The people getting shocked were actors and were not actually receiving electrical shocks. Many of the subjects continued to give high voltage shocks because they were told to. This proves that in high-stress situations people are willingly listen to authority figures despite what the say to do.

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1. What rationale do the author(s) give for conducting the study? The author that is conducting this research is testing the obedience of a subject when dealing with “stocking a victim” by use of a shock generator. There are thirty levels of shock that are generated varying from a slight shock to a severe shock.

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During the 1960’s Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments to test how a person reacts to authority. He started these tests in response to World War Two and the reports of the German soldiers who claimed they were “just following orders’ when asked about

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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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When the Milgram obedience experiments were being conducted the core of the experiments were all based on the false impression that an electrical shock would be administered to another individual at the push of a button with an incorrect answer, when in fact they weren’t. If the Milgram experiments were not based on lies and each participant did in fact administer a shock to another individual in response to a wrong answer, I feel that the results would have been the same with no alternative result. The reason for this would be because from the very beginning of the experiment the participants already believed that they would be actually administering an electrical shock. The participant’s reactions and concerns before, during and even after the experiments were all real with their true feelings and thoughts about their participation of either walking away from the experiment or completing the experiment. If the participants were to know that the electric shocks they were administering were not real, then the whole purpose of the experiment would have been useless and unnecessary.

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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.

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(Russell 2014) Conclusion: Despite controversy Milgram’s experiment was ground breaking. It remains relevant today and is frequently cited in demonstrating the perils of obedience.

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Stanley Milgram’s (1963) experiment is one of the most widely recognised psychological experiments of all time, aiming to explain obedience in the Holocaust, focussing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram’s obedience experiments suggest that in the face of authority people can’t help but obey orders. This essay will critically discuss this statement in relation to recent reappraisals of MIlgram’s experiments. Milgram’s famous experiments involved a teacher who would in fact be the participant within the experiment, administering shocks to the learner, who was in fact one of Milgram’s confederates, when they did not recall information correctly. Ultimately the learner would answer incorrectly in order

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They suggest that the participants who did not carry out the shocks to 450 volts were people who had good morals to begin with (Miale and Selver, 2005). While the participants with good intentions and morals were a minority, it is still an indicator that not all the participants can be classified as equal. Many of the reasons Milgram provides for the obedient participants can be changed to make more sense of why mass killings happen. Could it be possible that the obedient participants in Milgrams study and the people responsible for the Holocaust were actually aggressive and twisted people from the start? Milgram’s experiment gave them a perfect opportunity to express their violent behavior as well as the Holocaust (Miale and Selver, 2005).

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The hypotheses is will responsibility and civil courage increase after watching the documentary. The Independent variables are the positive and negative affect. The dependent variables were at both times responsibility and civil courage. In the first study they had fifty-two undergraduate students participated in the introductory psychology lecture at a German university. The study collected data before and after watching the documentary.

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Stanley Milgram is widely talked about in the psychology community, and even outside of it, he wished to look at obedience. He found an interest in authority and obedience because the horrific cases during World War II involving concentration camps. Jerry Burger wished to find out whether people still obey authority in 2006 like participants did in the Milgram study in 1963, 1965, and 1974. The final sample of participants consisted of 29 men and 41 women, ranging from age 20 to 81, with the mean age being 42.9 (Burger, 2009). The experiment was replicated with adjustments so that it would be ethical to carry out.

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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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