Obedience is described as a compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority. The majority of the world would say when pushed to a certain extreme that would lead to the harming of other people, humans would be not obedient to such a request because of our morals. Dr. Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, set up an experiment to prove this theory wrong. Dr. Milgram devised this experiment to focus on the conflict between obedience of the every day normal guy to the authority and personal conscience of their superiors. Milgram arranged this experiment to find any justification of the acts of genocide by those accused at the Nuremberg War Criminal trials. He was intrigued because most of the defenses against the court was based on that they were simply just following the orders of their superiors. A year after Adolf Eichmann’s, a German Nazi SS officer that organized much of the holocaust, trial in 1960, Milgram constructed this examination to answer his question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (McLeod 1). His main focus point was to see how easily people were influenced during WWII to commit such atrocities. Milgram started the experiment in 1963 by recruiting males through a newspaper article promising them $4.50. The article read: We will pay five hundred New Haven men to help us complete a scientific study of memory and learning. The study is being done at Yale University. “Each person who participates will be paid $4.00 (plus 50¢ carfare) for approximately 1 hour’s time. We need you for only one hour: there are no further obligations. You may choose the time you would like to co... ... middle of paper ... ...xposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed” (McLeod 7). These stressful situations produced many signs of tension such as stuttering, sweating, trembling and biting lips. Three of the participants had severe seizures that forced the experiment to stop. Works Cited Blass, Thomas. "The Man Who Shocked the World." Psychology Today. March/April 2002: 68-74. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 15 May. 2014. Carey, Benedict. "Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch?." New York Times (New York, NY). 01 Jul. 2008: F1+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 15 May. 2014. Cherry, Kendra. "The Milgram Obedience Experiment." About.com Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2014. McLeod, Saul. "The Milgram Experiment." Milgram Experiment. N.p., 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 15 May 2014.
The experiment began with Milgram placing an advertisement in the local newspaper to recruit volunteers for his experiment. The experiment began with the introduction of the other participant, the other participant being an ally of Milgram’s. Afterwards, each participant would draw straws to decide which role they would take up, the “teacher” or the “learner.” However, the decision was always fixed so that the participant would always end up being the teacher. The learner would then be strapped to an electric chair by the teacher and would have a list of words read to him to be
“Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition, compiled by Christine R. Farris and Deanna M. Jessup, Pearson, 2013, pp. 89-95. Originally published in American Psychological Association.
More specifically, the movie A Few Good Men depicts the results of blindly obeying orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, also explores obedience to authority in his essay “ The Perils of Obedience”. On the other hand, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, focused on disobedience to authority in his essay “ Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Milgram wrote about how people were shockingly obedient to authority when they thought they were harming someone else while Fromm dissected both: why people are so prone to obey and how disobedience from authoritative figures can bring beneficial changes for society. Obeying commands, even when they go against our morals, is human nature; Disobeying commands, however, is challenging to do no matter what the situation is.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people with abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own nature instinct. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world example, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures. Stanley Milgram shows the reader how big of an impact authority figures have but fails to answer the bigger question. Which is more important, obedience or morality?
John B.Watson, R Rayner, (February, 1920), Journal of Experimental Psychology, Conditioned Emotional Reactions, Vol. lll, No. i.
... no idea that the experiment was about their reactions. In Zimbardo’s the subjects knew of the simulation that would be taking place. In the end both cases proved that as Samucha explains Milgram and Zimbardo’s work demonstrates that, sometimes, the power of situations can be overpowering.
Young, R. K. (1985). Ebbinghaus: Some consequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 491-495. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.11.3.491
In 1963, Stanley Milgram of Yale University created one of the most well- known and famous studies on obedience. Milgram conducted this study in order to figure out if there were similarities involving obedience in the systematic killing of Jews from 1933 to 1945. The question Milgram was trying to answer was whether the Nazi's excuse for the murders of millions was a valid excuse and if the mass killings were because of orders the Nazi’s obeyed. According to Milgram, “obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose”. Essentially obedience means compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority. Obedience in society is both a good and bad thing in terms of it being an act of kindness or in terms of it being destruction. Milgram then creates a procedure consisting of a subject shocking a victim. This electric shock is caused by a generator used with 30 marked voltage levels that all range from 15 to 450 volts. In other words, these shocks vary from “Slight shock to Danger: Severe Shock”. The subject administers these shocks to the victim and if at a certain point in the experiment the subject refuses to go on with the experiment resulting in the act of "disobedience". Continuing the experiment is considered “obedience”. The subjects of his experiment were 40 males from New Haven and the surrounding areas. Participants all were from ages 20 to 50. Subjects responded from a newspaper advertisement and mail solicitations and believed that they were participating in a study of memory and learning at Yale. The men of this study all had a wide variety of jobs and all ranged in education levels. The men were paid $4.50 to participate in the study and no matter the ...
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
Why so many people obey when they feel coerced? Social psychologist Stanley Milgram made an experiment to find the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded that people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to cooperate with the authority, even when acting against their own better judgment and desires. Milgram’s experiment illustrates that people's reluctance to confront those who abuse power. The point of the experiment was to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim, at what point will the subject refuse to obey the experimenter. One main question of the experiment was that how far the participant will comply with the experimenter’s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him?
The Milgram experiment was designed and performed by Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961. Milgram created this experiment predominately to determine what would have motivated Germans to so readily conform to the demands put forth by the Nazi party. Milgram wished to answer his question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (McLeod). At the time of these experiments, debates about the Nuremberg trials, particularly the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major perpetrators in the Holocaust, were still ongoing. At these trials, many Nazi party officials and military officers were put on trial for committing “crimes against humanity.” Although some defendants pleaded guilty, others claimed that they were innocent and only following orders that were given to them by a higher authority, Adolf Hitler. In the end, twelve of the defendants were sentenced to death, three to life in prison, four to approximately fifteen year prison terms, and three were acquitted (“The Nuremberg Trials”)....
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
In order to understand the phenomena of obedience and disobedience, it is essential to understand the causes of these behaviors. The first and most common cause of both obedience and disobedience is authority. Countless examples demonstrate the significant impact of authority on a person’s behavior. The Milgram Experiment, conducted in 1963 by a Yale psychologist, was a prime illustration of how authority can greatly influence the actions of an individual. In the Milgram Experiment, there were two volunteers who were assigned the roles of either the “teacher” or the “learner.” The teacher would ask the learner a series of questions and if the learner answered a question incorrectly, the teacher issued an electric shock to the learner, increasing
Baumrind, Diana. “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New Jersey: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 224-229. Print.
...T. (2009). From New Haven to Santa Clara: A Historical Perspective on the Milgram Obedience Experiments. American Psychological Association, 64(1), 37-45.