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Factors that influence obedience and conformity
Factors that influence obedience and conformity
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The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were In “Options and Social Pressure” Solomon E. Asch conducts an experiment to show the power of social influence, by using the lengths of sticks that the participants had to match up with the best fit, Asch then developed different scenarios to see how great the power of influence is, but what he discovered is that people always conformed to the majority regardless of how big or small the error was the individual always gave in to the power of the majority. In his conclusion, Solomon states “ …those who participated in this challenging experiment agreed nearly without exception that independence was preferable to conformity.”(Solomon 30) What Solomon and all the participants of the experiment agreed that it was better to have been independent knowing that they made their choice themselves than to have stood with the majority
As Whitbourne states, "if participants want to discontinue their involvement in the study, they must be allowed to do so without any penalty or question" (Whitbourne). Milgram claims that all of the subjects were permitted to leave at any time; however, the experimenter displays an acknowledgeable amount of persistence towards the subject in continuing the experiment, insisting that “it’s absolutely essential” that they continue and that they “have no choice” but to stay in the experiment (Milgram 80-81). Baumrind insists that Milgram’s experimental design was degrading and emotionally harming to its subjects (Baumrind 92-93). Peter C. Baker, author of “Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram 's Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?,” claims that most humans tend to obey when they hear commands from an authority figure (Baker). Due to the fact that every subject in Milgram’s experiment volunteered to particpate, it can be assumed that the majority of the subjects held trust for their experimenter, who, in Milgram’s experiment, is the authority figure (Baumrind 93). As Baumrind mentions, Milgram’s experiment had the potential of causing participants of the experiment to have distrust toward other adult authorities in the future after realizing that they had been deceived and practically denied of their right to discontinue their participation in the study
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. The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher is the real subject and the learner is merely an actor.
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
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?
In “ Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments On Obedience” by Diana Baumrind, and in “Obedience” by Ian Parker, the writers claim that Milgram’s Obedience is ethically wrong and work of evil because of the potential harm that the subjects of the experiment had. While Baumrind’s article focused only on the Subjects of the experiment, Parker’s article talked about both immediate and long term response to experiment along with the reaction of both the general public and Milgram’s colleagues, he also talks about the effect of the experiment on Milgram himself. Both articles discuss has similar points, they also uses Milgram’s words against him and while Baumrind attacks Milgram, Parker shows the reader that experiment
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
Last evidence shown to prove that the experiment teach every people how to be an obedience with the law and obey a certain rules. Baumrind feels that the experimenter made the subject shock the victim by own will. But Milgram claims that “The experimenter tells the subject to do something. But between the command and the outcome there is a paramount force, the acting person who may obey or disobey” (Milgram 887). It means it really depend on a person if they going to obey or disobey the order even though they harming other people. For example in military, every soldiers should fight for their own country. But are they thinking about the innocent citizen? They just follow the order of a highest authority to only serve the country. Others might have traumatic experience but they need to face it.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
He believes the scientific advancements from Milgram’s experiment outweigh the temporary emotional harm to the volunteers of Milgram’s experiment. Also Herrnstein points out that Milgram’s experiment was created to show how easily humans are deceived and manipulated even when they do not realize the pain they are causing. We live in a society and culture where disobedience is more popular than obedience; however, he believed the experiment was very important and more experiments should be done like it, to gain more useful information. The experiment simply would not have been successful if they subjects knew what was actually going to happen, Herrnstein claims. He believes the subject had to be manipulated for the experiment to be successful. “A small temporary loss of a few peoples privacy seems a bearable price for a large reduction in
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 1961, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University wanted to study and observe how people would react to authority if asked to continue on a task even if it meant hurting another human being. The experiment first began at night in a small shadowy room. For the experiment, it required three people, there was first the volunteer which was a random person from the street who was considered the teacher in the experiment. Then their was the two actors who Milgram had payed them to be in the experiment, one of the two actors was the leaner who was strapped to the electric
The general goal of the experiment was to see how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict another person just because he or she was ordered to do so by an experimental scientist. In his article, "The Perils of Obedeince", Milgram concluded his analysis of the experiment by saying "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority," (Milgram, 1974, p76). Milgram summarized that obedience is a basic behavior element in social life that is deeply ingrained that it override people from acting according to the ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct (Milgram, 1973, p62). The way obedience is set in the modern society leads to the loss of personal responsibility from ordinary citizens. In the society, people are taught to behave legally and morally. However, Milgram argued that learning ethics does not necessarily determine what people will actually do in their real-life situations (Milgram, 1973, p76). To check the experiment 's accuracy, similar experiments were held in different countries such as South Africa,
Solomon Asch’s experiment in “Opinions and Social Pressure” studied a subject’s ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by the experimenter to claim two obvious mismatched lines were identical. The single individual who was not privy to this information was the focal point of the experiment. Twelve out of eighteen times the unsuspecting individual went along with the majority, dispelling his beliefs in favor of the opinions of the group.
In 1951, Solomon Asch carried out several experiments on conformity. The aim of these studies was to investigate conformity in a group environment situation. The purpose of these experiments was to see if an individual would be swayed by public pressure to go along with the incorrect answer. Asch believed that conformity reflects on relatively rational process in which people are pressured to change their behaviour. Asch designed experiments to measure the pressure of a group situation upon an individual judgment. Asch wanted to prove that conformity can really play a big role in disbelieving our own senses.