Milgram paper Summary section
To generalize a theory in psychology, experiments must be replicated so that data can be recognized as reliable. In accordance, several variants of the Milgram study are discussed below.
Experiment 14: Authority as Victim: An Ordinary Man Commanding
Methods and results: Two persons were assigned roles, one as a teacher the other as a learner. A confederate was placed in the room to act as the experimenter. The learner was forewarned that he/she may receive shocks up to 150 volts. Due to the natural reluctance to continue, the learner switched places with the teacher (who was the real experimenter). After the switch, the newly assigned teacher administered shocks
Both appear to be of the same age and height, the only variation is that experimenter 1 was softer in manner than experimenter 2. The normal procedure went on. At 150 volts, the learner leads out a protest causing both experimenters to carry out their will. One experimenter demands for the continuation of the experiment, the other indicates that he wants the experiment to come to a halt. The subject is therefore forced into a dilemma to choose between the experimenters. Of the 20 subjects, only one broke off before the disagreement and the other 18 stopped at the disagreement (90%). Another broke off one step beyond this point. Due to the presence of an unclear authority figure, many of the subjects attempted to define
This provides enough context for the conclusion that obedience is correlated with a person’s social status because of the subject’s decision to follow the clear authoritative figure. The confederate who demanded the continuation of the experiment did not receive any recognition of authority and therefore was not taken seriously. Subjects did not end the experiment because of their moral nature but because they naturally followed the orders of elite status. This presents the moral dilemma of contact with an authoritative figure--that external influences can outweigh any notion of internal
Both were told that they would be involved in a study that tests the effects of punishment on learning. The learner was strapped into a chair that resembled a miniature electric chair, and was told he would have to learn a small list of word pairs. For each incorrect answer, he would be given electric shocks of increasing intensity ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The experimenter informed the teacher that his job was to administer the shocks. The experimenter's job was to oversee that the experiment was completed.
As depicted in A Few Good Men, authors Fromm, Dalrymple, and Szegedy-Maszak provide evidence as to why blind obedience influences individuals’ motives, such as fear and trust, to examine how unjust authority pollutes a person’s ability to
...’s obedience level is affected by the location and surroundings of the experiment; they also hold a mutual understanding on the question of ethics. Yet, there is a larger question. Could these points indicate that humans are not fully in control of their actions?
The learners were a part of Milgram’s study and were 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 shocked, the teachers believed they were inflicting real harm on these innocent people.... ... middle of paper ...
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,
rather do what they are told and be cruel to the student than put an end to the experiment because
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.
Obedience is to obey orders that have been given to a person. Being obedient means that a person has to carry out tasks and orders without a choice. Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, conducted a series of experiment. To investigate obedience, he wanted to see whether Germans were focusing obedient to command a common fact for the Nazi killings in World War II. The psychologist selected participants for his experiment by advertisement for male volunteers to take part in study of learning. The draw was fixed where the “learner” was an actor picked by Milgram, and the subject was always get to be “teacher”. The “teacher” and “learner” went to a room that contained an electric shock generator with a row of switches from 15 volts to 450 volts. The rules of this experiment, if the “learner” got a wrong answer from the questionnaire given by the “teacher”, they will punish by an electric shock. The experimenter role is to push “teacher” to continue even though they harming the “learner”. Milgram aiming that how far people which is the subject would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another...
The teachers would initiate a “shock” to the student every time they got an answer wrong, but the teachers were unaware that the shock was fake. As the experiment continued, the shocks became more severe, and the students would plead for the teacher to stop since they were in pain. Despite the fact, that the participants continuously asked the authoritative experimenter if they could stop, “...relatively few people [had] the resources needed to resist authority” (Cherry 5). The participants feared questioning the effectiveness of the experiment, or restraining from continuing in fear of losing their job, going to jail, or getting reprimanded by Yale. A majority of the participants were intimidated by the experimenter, hence why they continued to shock the students, even though they knew morally, it was incorrect what they were doing. This experiment concluded, “...situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience...” (5). One's decisions are based on the situation they are facing. If someone is under pressure, they will resort to illogical decision making. There thoughts could potentially be altered due to fear, or hostility. In conclusion, the rash, incohesive state of mind, provoked by fear will eventually lead to the rise of
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
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...
Summary of the Experiment 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 increased. Similar procedure was undertaken on the teacher and the results of the experiments showed conclusively that a large number of people would go against their personal conscience in obedience to authority (Milgram 848).... ...
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.
The Milgram Experiment was biased and had many factors and variations that affected the outcome of his data. His experiment dealt with only male participants and so the data is not really able to represent how female participants would react. The American population is not able to be represented as well because his participants were self-selected. His participants came from a newspaper advertisement, so those who were wealthy and educated had the chance to participate, where those who were not wealthy and could not read, were not able to participate (Saltzman, 2000).
This is used as a challenge of free will because most of the participants went on with “shocking” the participants on the other side of the wall even though deadly amounts of voltage were being transferred when the participants answered a question incorrectly. The aim of this experiment was to see how easy ordinary people could be influenced by someone of authority. However, these people who sent the shock made the conscious decision to administer the shock. The authority told them it would be fine, and they did it. They knew these shocks were harmful, but listened to the authority figure anyway. In this case, I think both parties are responsible. Obviously the authority figure is responsible because he is telling the “teacher” that the experiment needs to continue, but the “teacher” is doing the action even though he knows the shock is harmful. It seems to me that this is more of a test of obedience rather than free