Stanley Milgram's Essay: The Perils Of Obedience

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Obedience to authority is shown in many ways, often times a person obeys another person because he or she is influenced by a stronger power, whether it being wealth, intellect, experience, or a higher position. In the essay The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram a study is performed where a “teacher” and a “learner” are placed in a room and the “teacher” is told to recite a list of words to the “learner” by the experimenter and the “learner” is required to name the second word back to the “teacher”. If the “learner” does not name the the correct word they are shocked for the “teacher” to witness. If the “learner” continues to name the wrong word they are shocked again, but with the shock level increasing every time. In the second essay, …show more content…

But, Dawson and Downey's code red does not have the outcome they expected. The soldiers they were administering it to, Pfc Santiago started to bleed at the mouth and eventually pass away after the two Marines tied him to a chair and stuffed a rag in his mouth. But, the two Marines were just following an order given to them by a superior officer. Just like in the test in The Perils of Obedience, the “teacher” was just following orders given to them by the experimenter who was in charge of the experiment. Both of these instances are examples of obedience to authority. Dawson, Downey, and the “teacher” did not recognize that the orders given to them were all were absolutely erroneous, they were just being adherent to orders given to them by a superior ranking …show more content…

In “The Stanford Prison Experiment” the inmates rebelled on the second day of the experiment and barricaded themselves inside of a cell with their bunks. The guards fought back by shooting a fire extinguisher at the inmates. The guards then proceeded to strip them naked, take their beds away, and place them in solitary confinement. This event connects back to the fact that Dawson and Downey had to control Pfc. Santiago because of his failure to conform to the Marine code “Unit. Corps. God. Country.” The Marine code is a very important motto for all Marines and is expected to be followed by all. But, Pfc. Santiago lacked code according to his superior officers and that is why he was administered the “code red” by Dawson and

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    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.

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  • Comparative Analysis of A Few Good Men

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    The question of why these Marines obeyed the “Code Red” may be answered by Stanley Milgram’s conclusions from his experiment on obedience. When asked by Kaffee, while...

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    Stanley Milgram, author of "The Perils of Obedience," conducted an experiment at Yale University to see if average citizens would partake in a study revolving around obedience to authority (Milgram 78). In said experiment, a professor from Yale would give an ordinary individual the authority to shock another person. If the ordinary individual asked to stop, the professor would coax them to continue and remind them they hold no responsibility (78). Not only did Milgram 's study revolve around obedience to authority, it also stressed the point of every person could be capable of torture and doing so without feeling responsible. In the article, "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism," author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak states, anyone can

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    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

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  • Compare And Contrast The Perils Of Obedience

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  • Abuse Of Power In A Few Good Men

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    When put into the position of complete authority over others people will show their true colors. I think that most people would like to think that they would be fair, ethical superiors. I know I would, but learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment has made me question what would really happen if I was there. Would I be the submissive prisoner, the sadistic guard, or would I stay true to myself? As Phillip Zimbardo gave the guards their whistles and billy clubs they drastically changed without even realizing it. In order to further understand the Stanford Prison experiment I learned how the experiment was conducted, thought about the ethical quality of this experiment, and why I think it panned out how it did.

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    In the movie “A Few Good Men” we learn the struggles that private Santiago is facing. We hear in the beginning of the movie the letter Santiago wrote to request a transfer from his current base. Santiago was never granted his transfer and later was found dead. Lance Corporal Dawson and private Downey are accused of murdering Santiago, Dawson and Downey want to plead not guilty to murder because they state that they were ordered by Lieutenant Kendrick to give Santiago a code red. A code red is putting a recruit in physical or emotional harm due to their actions or if they don’t follow the Marine code. As the judge I find the defendants not guilty of the murder of private Santiago, I find the defendants guilty of conduct unbecoming on officer.

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  • Blindly Obeying Authority

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    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).... ...

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  • The Influence Of Obedience In A Few Good Men

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    The two Marines did not understand why they were charged with his murder, claiming, “We didn’t do anything wrong.” They claimed that they were only following orders from a superior. To explain the Marines’ behaviors, Milgram would argue that the Marines fell to the pressures of authority. In the article “The Perils of Obedience,” Milgram tests the psychological affects on the “teacher” rather than on the “learner” (Milgram 78) About two-thirds of the test subjects were completely obedient and used the 450-volt shocks, and all of the participants used the painful 300-volt shock (Milgram 80). With these surprising results, Milgram deducts that many of these test subjects carried out these actions because of the authority figure in the room. Coming to a final conclusion, Milgram states that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (Milgram 86). Obedience to authority is ingrained in children from the day they are born, and they are raised to be obedient and this is why many people are obedient. With Milgram’s conclusion, it would be logical to assume that he would argue that the influence of authority is why Dawson and

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