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Obedience and conformity in our society
Obedience and conformity in our society
Obedience and conformity in our society
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The Perils of Obedience
This experiment is a test to see if people are naturally aggressive. Milgram does not believe that people are naturally aggressive. Although some people think people are naturally aggressive. Ordinary people can be part of a bad course of actions without having any anger toward then victim.
In finding that people are not naturally aggressive. Milgram now alters the experiment to find out why do people act the way they do. He compiled the experiment to answer, why do people obey authority, even when the actions are against their own morals.
One reason is to please authority. People in general like the feeling they get when they are doing a good job. Even though they know what they are doing is morally wrong, the way they tried to justify themselves is by verbally disagreeing. By doing this they feel that they are "on the side of the angels". A lot of people do not have the ability to disobey authority.
Another reason people obey is that they have a sense of obligation to their duty. This is just the whole idea of completing the job that’s given to you. Some people have a fear of being perceived as brash, or rude. In general, people want to present themselves in the best way possible.
Civilian obedience also comes from the sense that the responsibility for the victim is not their own. Since they do not have the blood on their hands, so to speak, their actions do not effect them.
It was found that the reasons for obedience are not only psychological but sociological as well. Milgram provides the idea of division of labor. As long as the product comes from an assembly line, there is no one person to blame.
This theory is put in question, when a variation of Stanley Milgram’s original experiment is described. This experiment enables the subject, not the experimenter, to choose the level of shock for incorrect answers. The results confirm that the majority of subjects did not pass the first loud protest. Stanley Milgram believes the most basic lesson of this experiment is that common people with no particular aggression, will carryout their jobs and become instruments of an evil operation.
In her excerpt, Baumrind discusses the potential dangers of the aftereffects on the participants of the experiment. On many occasions she suggests that these people are subjects of a cruel and unethical experiment, and suffer from harm to their self-image and emotional disruption (227). She also calls Milgram’s experiment a “game” (Baumrind 225); this illustrates her negative outtake on the experiment which is seen throughout the article. On the contrary, Parker discusses the aftereffects on Milgram himself. He expresses how the experiment, although it shows light to what extent of obedience a person may travel, ruined Milgram’s reputation. Parker also cites many notable authors and psychologists and their reactions to Milgram’s experiment. Despite their differences, Baumrind and Parker are able to find common ground on a few issues concerning the Milgr...
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority figures. Milgram is well aware of his audience and organization throughout his article, uses quotes directly from his experiment and connects his research with real world examples to make his article as effective as possible. Stanley Milgram selected 40 college participants, aged 20-50, to take part in the experiment at Yale University. Milgram says, “The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measureable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim” (632). Although the 40 men or women thought that they were in a drawing to see who would be the “teacher” and the “learner,” the drawing was fixed.
...e maximum shock level dropped significantly. The more official the experimenter looked, the more people would reach the maximum shock level. Stanley Milgram’s findings were groundbreaking. He found that humans will comply and obey ones orders than previously thought. His experiment has become one of the more well known and influential social psychology experiments completed.
Humans are constantly pressured to be obedient and abide by rules and orders. Time outs are enforced for children when they act against their parents. Schools have strict guidelines for behavior. When a student acts out, administrators impose immediate consequences. Individuals are conditioned to follow orders through the punishments for poor behavior. Stanley Milgram conducted as social experiment aimed at determining the extent of human obedience to authority figures without being forced to comply. The responsibility of the consequences was transferred to the authority figures. Many subjects delivered shocks with the intensity to kill. They obeyed orders despite their morals. Consequently, in A Few Good Men, Lance Corporal Harold
The issue of morality, concerning absolute obedience within the military, has been debated inside courtrooms and all areas of society for decades. Is it possible for there to be positive and negative acts of blind obedience? In his article “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram administers an experiment in order to understand the negative side of blind obedience (Milgram 77-89). His findings prove that people display a higher probability of hurting others when ordered to act out. Likewise, in his article “The Genocidal Killer in the Mirror,” Crispin Sartwell explains to his readers the cause of a “moral hero,” and he conveys why normal people display the capacity to commit heinous acts (Sartwell 117-119). Finally, examining the positive
At first Milgram believed that the idea of obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was appalling. He was not satisfied believing that all humans were like this. Instead, he sought to prove that the obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram staged an artificial laboratory "dungeon" in which ordinary citizens, whom he hired at $4.50 for the experiment, would come down and be required to deliver an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for failing to answer a preset list of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment "is to find the shock level at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to pull the switch" (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of reluctance and doubt within the reader. By this point in the essay, one is probably thinking to themselves, "Not me. I wouldn't pull the switch even once." In actuality, the results of the experiment contradict this forerunning belief.
Obedience is when you do something you have been asked or ordered to do by someone in authority. As little kids we are taught to follow the rules of authority, weather it is a positive or negative effect. Stanley Milgram, the author of “The perils of Obedience” writes his experiment about how people follow the direction of an authority figure, and how it could be a threat. On the other hand Diana Baumrind article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience,” is about how Milgram’s experiment was inhumane and how it is not valid. While both authors address how people obey an authority figure, Milgram focuses more on how his experiment was successful while Baumrind seems more concerned more with how Milgram’s experiment was flawed and
Milgram invented a shock generator that looked to be very intimidating. He had a theory that someone in a position of power could influence someone else to shock another person. The test subjects who went up to thirty on the shocks were called obedient subjects and those who stopped before thirty were called defiant subjects.
...g factors such as fear of consequences for not obeying, human nature’s willingness to conform, perceived stature of authority and geographical locations. I also believe that due to most individual’s upbringings they will trust and obey anyone in an authoritative position even at the expense of their own moral judgment. I strongly believe that Stanley Milgram’s experiments were a turning point for the field of social psychology and they remind us that “ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process”. Despite these findings it is important to point out it is human nature to be empathetic, kind and good to our fellow human beings. The shock experiments reveal not blind obedience but rather contradictory ethical inclinations that lie deep inside human beings.
Obedience is also seen by many as the path of least resistance; it isn’t as mentally demanding to follow someone’s orders. Assuming authority figures know what is best for everyone, it is simpler to do what we are told than to have to think for ourselves. But once we stop thinking for ourselves and begin following orders bli...
First of all, Milgram’s research on conformity was an experiment to test and observe the behavior of individuals, to see if there is a controversy between obedience to authority and personal conscience. The results were that about 60% of the participants continued on with the experiment to the highest level of electric shock. This explains that the normal people would more likely to put away their personal conscience to obey an authority figure whom they view as a more powerful one. If I were a participant in Milgram’s research on conformity, I believe I would carry out the order until the end of the experiment. Just like the majority of the participants back then, I would also carry on the order because as the experimenter give out the series
Well if you’ve made it this far you have obviously given in to orders and obeyed my authority. But why is it that people so easily do what they’re told when they feel coerced? Did you even think twice about not reading my paper? (Probably not Mrs. Ficca because you’re obligated to grade this, but that’s beside the point). It is human nature to desire to appear cooperative, even if it requires doing something they know is wrong. An experiment by Stanley Milgram in the 1960’s attempted to prove that obedience to authority overrides feelings of conscience. The participants of this experiment could either be “teachers” or “learners”. The teachers’ job was to quiz the learners and administer a painful shock for every wrong answer. The intensity of the shock increased with every wrong response. The twist was that the person running the experiment was sitting right next to the teacher, urging them to continue administering the shocks. Many people continued to listen to this authority figure, even when the learner uttered cries of pain! The message of this experiment is that people tend to obey authority when they feel coerced, even if they know it’s wrong. (Encina)
Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist best known for an experiment he did regarding destructive obedience (Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2011). According to McLeod, Milgram had originally set out to prove that Germans were somehow more obedient than Americans. This was a short while after WWII had finished and the horrors committed by the Nazis under Hitler’s authority had been learned. His experimental results were contradictory to the results predicted by fellow psychiatrists, college students and some adults of various occupations. They had predicted that very few people would obey an order that would harm another person; however, the actual results proved quite the opposite.