Evaluation of Milgram's Obedience Study
Stanley Milgram was from a Jewish background and conducted the
experiment to see how people can obey to an apparent authority figure
e.g. Germans in World War II. He advertised for participants in a
newspaper offering payment of $4.50. Volunteers were told that the
experiment was looking at the effects of punishment on learning. The
participant played the role of the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ was a
stooge, Mr Wallace. The teacher would ask the learner questions, when
answered incorrectly they administered electric shocks of increasing
voltage up to 450V. When the teacher began to worry the experimenter
would use several prompts to encourage their continuation. 65% of the
participants continued up to 450V, no one stopped before 300V. The
results were much higher than anyone had expected. However Milgram’s
work has been highly criticised on ethical and methodological grounds
and is highly controversial due to the stress caused to the
participants.
Milgram’s main critic on Ethical grounds is Diane Baumrind. She
criticised Milgram on 5 ethical issues; informed consent, deception,
the right to withdraw, protection of the participant and debriefing.
The British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines state that
participants should be given all the information they need to make an
informed decision on whether or not to take part in the experiment.
Baumrind believed that due to the nature of the experiment there was
no opportunity for the participants to be fully informed about the
experiment. Therefore they could not give their informed consent.
Milgram responded to this argument by saying tha...
... middle of paper ...
... in which they believe the experimenter
wants them to. Milgram suggested that the participants acted the way
they did because they were acting as an agent for the experimenter,
removing responsibility. This meant that the participants believed
they would not be responsible if the learner was harmed. In Hofling et
al’s experiment nurses were given orders by an unknown doctor by
telephone to administer a high dosage of medication to a patient,
without the necessary paperwork. 21 out of 22 obeyed the doctor’s
command. This was a field experiment and showed high ecological
validity. The nurses were not aware that they were in an experiment
and therefore could not have shown demand characteristics, and the
obedience rate was still extremely high.
Milgram’s experiment is also criticised under grounds of
generalisation.
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
In July of 1961, Stanley Milgram began his experiment of obedience. He first published an article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963. This article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, is what this paper will be critiquing. He then wrote a book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, in 1974 discussing his results in more detail. Milgram’s inspiration was the World War II and Adolf Hitler. During World War II, millions of innocent people were killed in a very organized manor. Milgram (1963) compares the organization and accuracy of the deaths, to the “efficiency as the manufacture of appliances” (p. 371). Milgram (1963) defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose” (p. 371). Milgram acknowledges that it may only take one person to come up with an idea, such as Hitler coming up with a way to eradicate the Jews, but would take an
Regression is a defense mechanism resulting in an individual returning to a childlike state to cope with unpleasant thoughts or stress. Regression occurs when an individual faces a particularly stressful or tense situation, and instead of handling said scenario in a mature and adult manner, an immature, childlike technique is employed to handle the anxiety. While a psychoanalytic analysis is more difficult given the subconscious nature of the tensions and resulting anxiety, there are several scenes through the movie that indicate Clark Griswold regresses to handle unpleasant and anxiety-inducing situations. In one example, Clark has been stringing lights on his house for hours, and upon attempting to light them comes to find that none of
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
Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a study at Yale University in 1962, in an attempt to understand how individuals will obey directions or commands. This study become known as the Milgram Obedience Study. Stanley Milgram wanted to understand how normal people could become inhumane, cruel, and severely hurt other people when told to carry out an order, in a blind obedience to authority. This curiosity stemmed from the Nazi soldiers in Germany, and how their soldiers could do horrible acts to the Jews. To carry out his study, Dr. Milgram created a machine with an ascending row of switches that were marked with an increasing level of voltage that could be inflicted on another person. Then, he gathered forty random males between the ages of 20 and 50 that lived in the local area. He then told them that this experiment was to see how people learned through pain or punishment rather than without. The teacher volunteer would see the other volunteer or victim put on electronic straps and would not be able to see the person being shocked but could hear them. This setup was fake and the person being shocked had pre-recorded answers and reactions to the ascending row of buttons. The teacher volunteer would ask questions through a headset to the victim volunteer, and whenever a question was answered incorrectly, the teacher would increase the level of
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.
Obedience is a widely debated topic today with many different standpoints from various brilliant psychologists. Studying obedience is still important today to attempt to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre happened so society can learn from them and not repeat history. There are many factors that contribute to obedience including situation and authority. The film A Few Good Men, through a military court case, shows how anyone can fall under the influence of authority and become completely obedient to conform to the roles that they have been assigned. A Few Good Men demonstrates how authority figures can control others and influence them into persuading them to perform a task considered immoral or unethical.
Compliance is “a form of social influence involving direct requests from one person to another”, whilst Obedience is “a form of social influence in which one person simply orders one or more others to perform some actions” (Baron, R.A. & Branscombe, N.R., 2014, p. 255). These two terms are methods of social influence, particularly prominent in Milgram’s study on obedience. Milgram’s study is a psychological experiment focusing on whether or not people would obey authority figures, even when the instructions given were morally wrong. Back then; the terms of the experiment were completely acceptable, but due to the strict controls of contemporary psychology today, this test would be impossible to repeat. The trial breaches many ethical factors
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
Milgram’s studies on obedience to authority as well as obedience under extreme stress, paved a way to understanding the human psyche and how we handle choices we do not understand. As human beings we are given from a very young age a set of morals and standards we choose to live by. We see our parent’s successes and failures and we base the choices we make on what made them happy, and what will in the long run, bring us the same joy. From the beginning of the experiment you can see the pressure he starts everyone under. Where he chooses to begin his testing tells you a lot about what he was wanting them all to feel. A very rundown, dark, empty building with prison cell like rooms with sparse walls. Pipes showing and most likely a musty smell
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.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act"(Blass, 2009, p101). This is what Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, said after conducting the famous obedience experiment. The participants of the experiment were told to deliver electric shocks ranging from 30 to 450 volts to the other person. The participants could see the other person suffering as the intensity of the shock goes up. They could either follow or deny the order from the instructor, but the instructor kept telling them to raise the shock at each level. With this study, Milgram compared and contrasted the relationship
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.