It is only natural to dismiss the idea of our own personal flaws, for who with a healthy sense of self wanders in thoughts of their own insufficiency? The idea of hypocrisy is one that strikes a sensitive nerve to most, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study done by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, involving the effects of discipline. In the essay, "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably", Meyer takes a look at Milgram's study that mimics the execution of the Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a series of subjects under similar conditions of stress, authority, and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is giving subjects the impression that they are shocking an individual for incorrectly answering a list of questions, but perhaps more interesting is the results that occur from both ends of the research. Meyer's skill in this essay is using both the logical appeal of facts and statistics as well as the pathetic appeal to emotion to get inside the reader's mind in order to inform and dissuade us about our own unscrupulous actions.
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.
To further inform the reader using the logical appeal, Meyer gives the estimated results by both the experimenter and fourteen Yale psychology majors. These hypotheses predicted a typical "bell curve" in which a few subjects would cease in the beginning, most would break off somewhere in the middle, and very few would go to the max voltage of shock.
It is human nature to respect and obey elders or authoritative figures, even when it may result in harm to oneself or others. Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, conducted an experiment to test the reasoning behind a person’s obedience. He uses this experiment in hope to gain a better understanding behind the reason Hitler was so successful in manipulating the Germans along with why their obedience continued on such extreme levels. Milgram conducts a strategy similar to Hitler’s in attempt to test ones obedience. Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist, disagreed with Milgram’s experiment in her article, ”Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of obedience”, Baumrind explains
The apparatus used was a simulated shock generator that would administer the shocks but none would be physically damaging. The participants believed they were giving victim an electric shock ranging from 15 to 450 volts, but in actuality the machine was not working. Participants included 40 males who were between the ages of 20 and 50 years old (Milgram, 1963). Compensation was set at $4.50 for just showing up to the experiment, not based on the outcome. Participants believed that they were helping someone with a learning experiment to see how penalties affected remembrance (Milgram, 1963). The penalty is the electric shock given by the participants to the man they had never met. The person, participants believed was the subject of the experiment was an Irish-American man who was 47 years old. The experimenter conducting the experiment was a 31 year old high school biology
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
Milgram wielded with 40 males that were between the age ranges of 20 through 50. 15 men out of the 40 that were the subjects of this study were either skilled or unskilled workers, 16 men were white-collar sales or business men, and 9 were professional men. These subjects were preferred by newspaper ads and direct-mail application querying for the subjects to be rewarded participants for this study. With this research, Milgram uses two participants that was a confederate and an actor who looked authoritative. As each participant participated in the experiment, each one was to draw pieces of paper from a hat that determined if they were either a teacher or a learner. Yet, the drawing was manipulated so that the subject would become a teacher and the associate was the learner. The learner was destitute to a chair and wired up with electrodes that was attached to the shock generator in the adjacent room. There were questions that were proposed to the learner and for every answer that was wrong, the subject was to conduct an electric shock. For each wrong answer that was given, the subject was to increase the level of shock on the generator. Withal, the results of this research was that every participant continued to at least the level of 300-volt. Yet, 14 participants eluded orders to be free before reaching the maximum voltage and 65% pursued the experimenter’s commands and reached to the top of
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. The learners were a part of Milgram’s study and taken into a room with electrodes attached to their arms. The teachers were to ask questions to the learners and if they answered incorrectly, they were to receive a 15-450 voltage electrical shock. Although the learners were not actually being shocked, the teachers believed t...
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
It is amazing to look back and realize that this experiment was done to determine how the Nazis could all have so much hate towards the Jewish people. The lack of compassion towards humans shown by the Nazi Germans during the holocaust inspired Milgram to conduct this experiment. He was curious on how any sane human being could want to participate in genocide of an entire group of people. It’s incredible to know that something like the Nazi war could bring about such valuable information to psychology. For years Milgram’s theory has been one of the primary points of social psychology. Because of the results revealed after Milgram’s creative design, psychologists use this information today to describe certain behaviors in people. I believe it is fair to say that Stanley Milgram has had one of the largest impacts in the history of social psychology.
In a series of experiments conducted from 1960 to 1963, American psychologist Stanley Milgram, sought to examine the relationship between obedience and authority in order to understand how Nazi doctors were able to carry out experiments on prisoners during WWII. While there are several theories about Milgram’s results, philosopher Ruwen Ogien uses the experiment as grounds for criticizing virtue ethics as a moral theory. In chapter 9 of Human Kindness and The Smell of Warm Croissant, Ogien claims that “what determines behavior is not character but other factors tied to situation” (Ogien 120). The purpose of this essay is not to interpret the results of the Milgram experiments. Instead this essay serves to argue why I am not persuaded by Ogien’s
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.
The real focus of the experiment is the teacher. He will be in charge of a shock generator. The teacher does not know that the learner, supposedly the victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock whatsoever. Again this experiment is to see if the teacher proceeds with the shocks that are ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting 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.
...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.
In Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram conducted experiments with the objective of knowing “how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist" (Milgram 317). In the experiments, two participants would go into a warehouse where the experiments were being conducted and inside the warehouse, the subjects would be marked as either a teacher or a learner. A learner would be hooked up to a kind of electric chair and would be expected to do as he is being told by the teacher and do it right because; whenever the learner said the wrong word, the intensity of the electric shocks were increased. Similar procedure was undertaken on t...
It is harder to go against or make an objection about unethical aspect of the experiment when people do not know each other well. Therefore, rather than strongly opposing and criticizing the instructor 's unethical decision, people just behaved according to the orders. Thirdly, the participants regarded the instructor as a professional researcher (Blass, 2009, p113). Therefore, they believed in the instructor 's decision to do so and obeyed the given instruction. Since Milgram or the instructor was a more intelligent person than most of the people, the participants would have imagined that there would be a specific reason why he held this experiment. Therefore the participants tried to understand the instructor 's intention and respected his choice. Or on the other hand, the participants were ignorant about the experiment, since they were not the one getting the consequent electric shocks. Lastly, the electric shocks were explained to the participants to be painful, but not detrimental (Griggs & Whitehead, 2015, p316). Thus these factors affected the participants to rely more on the instructor 's orders and obey what was told them to
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.