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The Milgram Obedience Experiment: Logan Pratts

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The Milgram Obedience Experiment Logan Pratts Mount Saint Michael Academy Advanced Psychology Ms. Johnson February 26, 2023 Throughout human history, the world has gone through many eras of different leaders. Leaders such as Alexander the Great, Basil II, and Napoleon Bonaparte were all successful because of their tactics and their ability to fully utilize the capabilities of their subordinates. The authority that people of power have allows others to be used as tools, but how far does authority go? Think back to Nazi Germany, many German soldiers knew of the atrocities that Hitler incited, but they all continued to follow orders. The reason why many people continue to follow orders even if they bring harm to others is the fear …show more content…

His family was primarily made up of Jewish immigrants; he grew up learning what happened to his relatives in Europe and he was particularly intrigued by Hannah Arendt’s report on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram wondered whether her claims about “the banality of evil” – that evil acts can come from ordinary people following orders as they do their jobs – could be demonstrated in the lab (Blass, 2002). The Milgram Obedience Experiment then began in July 1961, the same month as Adolf Eichmann’s trial (Greenwood, 2018). The experiment contained 3 people, the experimenter, the teacher, and the …show more content…

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”. Throughout the experiment, the teachers were told that there would be no permanent damage done by the shocks, and when the experiment was over they were asked to rate the pain of the last shock they administered on a scale from 0 to

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The learner was taken into a room and strapped onto a chair connected to a shock generator. The shock generator started at 30 volts, and the max was 450 volts. He then had to select a, b, c, or d to answer the questions given. The teacher said long words and then would test the

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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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Would people actually issue a shock that could be potentially fatal to the person they are issuing the test to? The biggest part of this was the influence of the “professor” that was in the room with the “teachers”. Whenever a particularly large shock was issued to the “learner” he would cry out in pain. This caused several people to question whether

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(What does the study add to our understanding of the phenomenon?) People are much more likely to obey someone of authority than expected, even if it is against their beliefs or morals. Something such as Hitler’s rise to power could have been just as possible in the United States because Americans are just as likely as the Germans to continue to do something that they know is

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In experiment 13, the same situation occurred except for the fact that the experimenter as now a “common man”. The results of obedience lowered greatly. 16 of the 20 subject refused to continue. This proved that the subject is obedient, to a person with authentic authority and not a “common man”.

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In the reading, about Stanley Milgram. Milgram conducted a study about, “procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory (Milgram 1).” Overall, Milgram wanted to investigate “obedience”, authority acts for the genocide killings of WW11, were they just following orders. Our behavior is under the control of these social norms, or unwritten rules that society follows just as that of Milgram’s Obedience experiment. Social norms are shared by members of different cultures, groups and communities about how to behave.

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In 1963, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a controversial, but highly revered, study on obedience. The experiment was designed to test people’s morals versus an extreme authority, but, as predicted, obedience prevailed. Then in 1973, Philip G. Zimbardo created his own experiment, not unlike Milgram’s, that analyzed the potential of individuals to withstand the pressure of succumbing to an obedient role based on the environment. Both Stanley Milgram, author of “The Perils of Obedience,” and Philip Zimbardo, author of “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” conducted these experiments to show how an ordinary person’s obedience could be affected based off of the situation they are put in.

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1) One real life example of the Milgram Obedience Experiment can be seen during Hitler's and the Nazi's reign in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Each Nazi was presumably paid, and if they defied Hitler's demands or higher ranking Nazi's orders they would be executed. As a result, as a fear tactic to ensure their lives. In the decades since the Milgram Experiment, the results have been held up as proof of the depths of ordinary people’s depravity in service to an authority figure. At the time, this had deep and resonant connections to the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.

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The obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram can tell sociologists about the human tendency to obey immoral orders. This explains how atrocities, such as the Holocaust, come about and augment to the extent that they do. Furthermore, the Milgram experiment can be connected to how anti-authoritarianism is viewed as a detriment or sickness in the United States, as well as how people in the United States can actually be more prone to obey illegitimate authority than those who already reside in oppressive, authoritarian countries. Milgram aimed to prove the common belief that the cause of acts of atrocity is not necessarily because those perpetrators are innately unprincipled but that these historical tragedies are more so the result of following

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Participants were ordered to ask the learners a series of questions, and if they got them incorrect, they would give them a shock which gradually got more powerful with each question that they missed. The learner was really just a voice recording, so there was not anyone truly being shocked, but the teachers were under the impression that the experiment was real. Each time the learner got a question wrong, the teacher shocked the learner. The learner would wince from pain, and it would get louder and more aggressive as the experiment went on. Some of the participants wanted to stop the experiment because they didn't want

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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 "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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They were also told to be like a “student” while the person who is conducting the experiment acts like a “teacher” who is also in-charge of giving electrical shocks. This experiment goes by as

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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.

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BACKGROUND “Obedience is an active or deliberate form of social influence, which involves someone in authority requiring us to behave in a particular was in a particular situation.” (Gross, R 2015:446) Stanley Milgram (1963) ‘behavioural study of obedience’ was “originally attempting to test the ’Germans are different’ hypothesis” (Gross, R 2012:226) to explain how a dictator like Hitler was able to coerce thousand to execute millions of Jews, Poles and others within his Nazi reign between the 1930s and 1940s. Milgram had planned to conduct this study in Germany, once he had completed these American studies but due to the conclusion, further studies were not necessary. This study focuses “on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal

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