Obedience is something most people are taught at a very young age. They are taught to listen to the commands of their parents, older siblings and family members, adhere to the instructions of teachers. People are taught that obedient behavior was rewarding, and defiant or disobedient behavior would most likely lead to punishment. That seems like a simple concept to comprehend, but what happens when being obedient means causing harm to others. Blind obedience is a term that, put simply, means doing something because you are told, without putting any thought of your own into the decision. This type of obedience has been used to describe the actions of people involved in notorious events in world history; most notably, the actions of Nazi officials …show more content…
He enlisted forty participants and told them that they would be taking part in a study on the effects of punishment on learning. When they showed up to the testing site, they met with an experimenter and a confederate, Mr. Wallace, who they were led to believe was another participant in the study, just like them. As part of the experiment, it was determined that the participants would act as the “teacher” and Mr. Wallace would take on the role of the “learner”. The procedure the participants had to follow was straightforward; they were to read Mr. Wallace a list of paired words, and then through a series of multiple choice questions, test his memory. If he answered the question correctly, the participants moved on; however, if he got it incorrect, they were to administer him a shock, by pressing the indicated switches on the shock generator, with the shocks increasing by fifteen volts with each incorrect answer. As the shocks increase, Mr. Wallace begins to exhibit more and more signs of distress, asking for the study to end, and even making complaints of a heart condition. Despite his hesitance, the participants continued with the experiment because of the urging of the experimenter; if the participant remarked that they wanted to stop or check on the learner, the experimenter urged them by remarking “it is absolutely essential that you continue” or “you have no other choice; you must go on” (Kassin,
It just goes to prove that obedience is ingrained in us all from the way we are raised. We are raised to listen to our elders in the family situation or individuals in authority in the school and workplace situations (McLeod).
The experiment consists of two people that take part in a study of memory learning, one of them referred to as the "Teacher" and the other as the "Learner." The experimenter explains that the study's main goal is to observe the effect of punishment on learning. The learner will be seated in something similar to the electric chair, his arms will be strapped and an electrode will be attached to his wrist. The learner will be told that he will be tested on his ability to remember the second word of a pair when he hears the first one again. If he makes a mistake, he will then receive electric shocks of increasing intensity.
Laura Slater explains Stanley Milgram's’ experiments with obedience to authority by first beginning with a hypothetical personal experience that breaks down the experiment in a first person perspective. This perspective humanizes an experiment that tests how far people would go when told, and in the end the results were scary. The entire experiment was based on the fact that there was a “learner” and a “teacher”. The teacher asks questions, and whenever the learner gives the incorrect answer, they receive an ever increasing shock, eventually leading to death if it went that far. People
1. In Stanley Milgram’s original experiment where he studied the potential of a person to physically harm another when told to do so by an authority figure, he assigned three roles: experimenter, teacher, and learner. The experimenter and learner were complicit in the experiment’s intended goal to measure the threshold at which a person would disobey a command to administer increasing levels of shock treatment. The shock treatment was presented to the teacher as having 15 level increments ranging from 15-450 volts, with descriptions from “slight shock” to “danger: severe shock.” The experiment was disguised as an attempt to study the effects of punishment on memorization of word groups, and involved the unknowing teacher to inflict fake shock treatment at increasing intervals upon the actor-learner upon their delivery of an
Obedience is the complying of demands of others, usually those in positions of authority (Brace and Byford). The studies of obedience by Milgram (1963) and Hofling et al (1966) are one of the most famous studies in psychology. Milgram began the study to explore whether Adolf Erichman, one of the Nazi leaders involved in the holocaust, was an evil man or just being obedient (Brace and Byford). Hofling 's study started subsequently after Milgram to further explore obedience in a real life scenario. The results of these studies were truly surprising, but there were differences in ethics, methodology validity and results in which will be explored in this essay. (The Open University, 2016)
Their prediction is that only a minute number of participants will go through the highest shocking volts (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2). Since most subjects were convinced that the experiment is to study the effects of punishment on memory, they believe that the experimental situation is real. The subjects also believe that they were inflicting pain on the victim every time they administer a shock volt. Although the subjects were enlighten about the procedure, and what is required of them, the aspect of the false identity of the victim was unknown. None of them was aware that the learner is a trained confederate of the experiment. Therefore, the subject’s idea about the experiment being real creates emotional discomfort in behavior and surprising genuine observational results. Twenty-six subjects obeyed the experimental commands fully by administering the highest level of shock though many were very uncomfortable doing so. Fourteen broke off the experiment after the learning refuses to participate further (Milgram,
According to the article ''when the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued'' (Saul McLeod). As the text says they had to follow orders. Their job was to be obedient toward the authority. In addition, ''The teacher had to force he learner's hand down onto a shcok plate when they refuse to participate after 150 volts. Obedience fell 30%'' (Saul McLeod). Even if the learner doesn't want to do it, they have to do it. ''83.7% said that they were glad to be in the experiment, and 1.3% said that they wished had not been involved'' (Saul McLeod). It means almost all the participants agreed on how they can make people follow orders.
Milgram wanted to put it to the test and see if the Germans were just following orders from authority figures. For his experiment, he had three roles: the learner, the teacher, and the researcher. The learner, who was an actor, was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arm while the teacher and the researcher were in another room that had an electric shock generator and switches that ranged from slight shocks to dangerous and deadly shocks. The teacher had to test the learner’s spelling of a list of words. Every time the learner made a mistake, the teacher is told to administer an electric shock, increasing by fifteen volts each time a question is answered incorrectly. The learner, purposely gave many wrong answers and many teachers administered a shock, but some refused to administer a shock. When the teacher refused, the researcher gave the teacher’s orders to continue the test and ignore the suffering learner. The learner demonstrates that people are obedient towards authority figures. These authority figures are the ones that are
In her article "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience", Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist, castigates a Stanley Milgram experiment which created a scenario where a test subject was asked to "torture" a fellow test subject if they answered a question incorrectly. Baumrind believes flaws in the experiment exist. For example, she believes one complication with the experiment is the conditions leave the subject vulnerable. She adds to the argument by stating, "The subject has the right to assume that his security and self-esteem will be protected" (Baumrind 90). Overall, she believes the accused fallacies of the Milgram experiment discredit his findings as well as science of psychology (Baumgrind 94). "Obedience"
The basic experiment consisted of a teacher, a learner, and an administrator. The learner was strapped into a chair and the teacher read him/her words and the learner had to know what word to pair it with. Whenever the learner answered incorrectly, the administrator instructed the teacher to shock the learner with a volt of electricity. As the learner continued to respond inaccurately, the teacher had to execute shocks with higher and higher voltage causing greater and greater pain for the learner. About 60% of all “teachers” obeyed the entire time, giving the highest voltage and most painful shock (Milgram 80). British writer Ian Parker in “Obedience” analyzes Milgram’s life and his experiment. He questions the true purpose of the experiment and wonders if it really tested obedience and morals or situational
All of the subjects experienced displacement because they were placed in the experiment with no relation to the learner. By not having a relationship with the learner, it makes it a bit easier for them to distribute the shock. In some cases, if you do not know a person, then you are not as emotionally involved which makes it easier to follow out the task given by the authority. Another subject, Mr. Braverman, gave a surprising reaction of laughter which probably stemmed from his “severe inner tension”. This experiment gave him the opportunity to release his tension, but one could infer that he probably would not have reacted the way he did if it was someone he knew. Furthermore, obedience took a downfall when orders were given by telephone. However, when the experimenter came back to the lab, the disobedient learner would then continue. It is something peculiar about the absence of a relation and the presence of authority that tends to make us more obedient and more
Obedience is the compliance with an order or submission from authority, thus that behavior had been deeply established inside one person for a long time ago. Milgram set up the experiment at the Yale University to test how much people were willing to hurt others in order to satisfy the authority’s command. In the original experiment, there were two people who came to the lab to be tested in the study of memory and learning. One of them would act as a teacher, who was seated in front of the electric switches from slightest to the most dangerous, while the other acted as
The issue of deception was hugely evident in this experiment. The participants firstly believed the experiment was studying the effects of punishment on learning, secondly they believed they were drawing straws to decide who would be receiving and who would be administering electric shocks and finally they were lead to believe the pain they were inflicting on the learner was in fact
This quote, by Stanley Milgram (1974, p. 205), exemplifies the debate that exists around the topic of obedience. Obedient behaviours have been studied in Milgram’s famous obedience experiments, and evidence of atrocities being carried out as a result of obedience can be seen in situations such as the holocaust in World War Two (Mastroianni, 2000) and more recent events such as (My Lai). This essay will explain both sides of the debate, arguing for situation and individual factors that influence people to behave in particular ways. Therefore, an interactional approach is argued here, that the situation and individual influences cannot be disentangled. A brief explanation of Milgram’s baseline study (1963) will be introduced first, before evaluating the different interpretations Milgram held in later years. These evaluations will be used to display the opinions held about both sides of the argument, in which the situation and the individual person both play an important role in how a person will behave in regards to obedience to authority.
The experiment’s original intent was to determine if society would simply obey to authority when put under pressure by an authoritative figure. Milgram put a twist on the experiment asking the age-old question of, “if the Germans during WWII were simply obeying to authority when carrying out the Holocaust or were they all acting on their own”(Blass). The test subject, or teacher, would administer electric shocks to the learner, a paid actor, when the learner incorrectly answered the word pairings. The teacher thought the learner was receiving electric shocks when in reality the learner was not receiving any shocks. An instructor, the authoritative figure, was sitting behind the teacher reassuring the teacher that the shocks may be painful but would not inflict permanent damage. Throughout the experiment, the teacher can be seen looking back towards the instructor for permission on whether to continue or stop (ABC).The teacher instructed the learner to continue even when the learner cried out in pain and begged for the experiment to stop (ABC). Sixty-five percent of the time, the teacher continued until he administered the ...