Assignment #1
A fundamental aspect of psychology is the concept that psychology is empirical. The premise of psychology being empirical essentially states that psychology’s conclusions are drawn from one’s direct observations as opposed to one’s reasoning, speculation, core beliefs or common sense (Weiten, 2014). This approach relies on scientific experiments and the experimental method. The experimental method, essentially, is where an investigator creates a testable hypothesis, accordingly adjusts a single variable (experimental group) under carefully monitored conditions, then observes whether any changes have occurred on a second variable (control group). Neither Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study nor Milgram Obedience Study met the traditional
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Replicating studies is crucial because it it helps science identify and void erroneous findings (Weiten, 2014). Replicating the Stanford Prison Study and Milgram’s Obedience Study in contemporary society would give us insight on whether the changes in socioeconomic, cultural and societal factors would influence the harsh behaviors of the guards in the prison study or the teachers in the obedience experiment. There are various actions that can be used to accommodate for APA standards. The Stanford Prison Study could be adjusted to meet current APA standards if it had put significantly greater emphasis on protecting the prisoners’ emotional health along with their physical health. This could have been done through blatantly warning about the humiliation the prisoners would endure and restricting the guards from abusing the prisoners in any type of way (Hock, 2012). Milgram’s Obedience Study did not meet society’s ethical standards because of the large amounts of stress it gave the teacher because of the deception he would be under. To adjust for this, I would put strongly emphasize to the teachers of the experiment about the option they have to opt out at any given moment so they would not be pressured into “hurting” someone against their own will and would endure the painful guilt the stress and anxiety would add. …show more content…
For example, despite the notorious backlash both the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's Obedience Study faced for their ethical abuse and the pessimistic view about human nature most folks draw from them, there were some strong positives these experiments were able to create. Zimbardo’s experiment helped us understand the impact empowering others has on one’s confidence and ability to govern. When the guard’s were given their new major responsibilities, they were able to quickly adapt to their new environment and effectively fill their roles by displaying both leadership and strong confidence. Milgram’s study allowed us to gauge whether or not those acting as teachers in the experiment would latch onto the sadistic behavior of the experimenters. It was reported when the teachers were instructed to punish the learners to any level they desired, none of them ever chose a setting above “slight shock” (Hock, 2013). This act of concern for others is warming to observe and helps us to learn and appreciate the humanity members of our society show when they get to make their own choices of penalties for something they consider
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.
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
If a person of authority ordered you inflict a 15 to 400 volt electrical shock on another innocent human being, would you follow your direct orders? That is the question that Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University tested in the 1960’s. Most people would answer “no,” to imposing pain on innocent human beings but Milgram wanted to go further with his study. Writing and Reading across the Curriculum holds a shortened edition of Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” where he displays an eye-opening experiment that tests the true obedience of people under authority figures. He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority figures. Milgram is well aware of his audience and organization throughout his article, uses quotes directly from his experiment and connects his research with a real world example to make his article as effective as possible.
Blass, Thomas. Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience Experiment: The Role of Personality, Situations, and Their Interactions. American Psychological Association, Inc, 1991. Print
Obedience to authority and willingness to obey an authority against one’s morals has been a topic of debate for decades. Stanley Milgrim, a Yale psychologist, conducted a study in which his subjects were commanded by a person in authority to initiate lethal shocks to a learner; his experiment is discussed in detail in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgrim 77). Milgrim’s studies are said to be the most “influential and controversial studies of modern psychology” (Levine).While the leaner did not actually receive fatal shocks, an actor pretended to be in extreme pain, and 60 percent of the subjects were fully obedient, despite evidence displaying they believed what they were doing was harming another human being (Milgrim 80). Likewise, in Dr. Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, conducted an experiment, explained in his article “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which ten guards were required to keep the prisoners from
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.
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.
When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This research, known more commonly now as the Stanford prison experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individualistic perspectives, ethics, and behavior. Later it is discovered that the results presented from the research became so extreme, instantaneous and unanticipated were the transformations of character in many of the subjects that this study, planned originally to last two-weeks, had to be discontinued by the sixth day. The results of this experiment were far more cataclysmic and startling than anyone involved could have imagined. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the discoveries from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and of Burrhus Frederic “B.F.” Skinner’s study regarding the importance of environment.
In school, many teachers or instructors might influence their student by knowing their level of obedience. Some of them might use punishment if the students didn’t follow a certain instruction or disobey the rule. On the article The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram, the experiment has huge confusion if it is successful by punishing other people with electric shock if they got wrong or disobey an instruction. If you were the student in this experiment, do you think you would face harm? Although Milgram’s experiment was unethical, his studies brought attention to human behavior that is both interesting and terrifying.
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...
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
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).... ...
He debriefed participants thoroughly, gave them the right to withdraw, kept their results private and confidential, and did actually try to protect them from harm; even going as far as to check up on them a year later to check if there was any long lasting damage. The commands Milgram used were appropriate in order to find accurate results for his research and minimal discomfort for the participants was controlled for in the experiment. This demonstrates that Milgram did carry out the correct ethical procedures required, for this kind of experimentation and only using deception when required for the experiments. Because Milgram's obedience studies are often used as the prototypical example of why strong protection of human subjects in research is needed, some researchers, including many psychologists, assume that it was this research that was responsible for the development of stronger federal guidelines and requirements for local institutional review boards (IRBs). It can be argued that few studies in the history of psychology have produced, or at least contributed to, so many seminal changes in psychology. Because of Milgram's obedience research, psychologists have become more acutely aware of ethical issues in their research, and the result has been changes in ethics codes and procedures for the review of research proposals in universities, government and military agencies, and federal funding agencies. Moreover, the obedience studies resulted in sweeping changes in the broad fields of personality and social psychology, including a diminution of the importance of person or trait variables accompanied by an exceptionally strong emphasis on the power of situations as behavioral determinants, new models that highlighted person-by-situation interactions, new interpretations of linkages of attitudes and behaviors, and a shift in research from laboratory studies to field
The researchers also considered Hans Toch’s use of the scientist-practitioner and his influence on its popularity. They also considered Tom Tyler’s work on people’s views and obedience to authorities when they are viewed as legitimate. His work showed that people are more willing to follow authority and the law when they are perceived as just and individuals are given a voice. The last additional source the researchers considered was the RNR model by Don Andrews and Jim Bonta in their work The Psychology of Criminal Conduct. Their work created a strategy that used empiricism to find the most important risk factors for offending and evidence based principles to alter the risk factors that could be changed. The researchers concluded that because of the influence of psychology in prisons has brought many benefits such as a lower suicide rates, mortality rates, and homicides. The researchers also concluded that it is necessary to engage prison staff at different levels of leadership. They found that it was important to share scientific knowledge with prison guards and workers, and explain why that knowledge was needed so that the benefits of prison psychology can permeate all of the prison system. The researchers predicted that prison conditions will continue to improve and prevent suicide, disorder, and recidivism and improve safety. The researchers hoped that their conclusions would lead to an increased investment by the members of the APA into prison research, and a greater implementation of psychology throughout the prison
This experiment is very interesting as in reminded a lot of a very famous experiment that was conducted back in 1963, The Milgram’s Obedience Experiment. According to De Vos (2009), Stanley Milgram studied the willingness of an individual to obey instructions from an authoritative figure despite the fact that they might be acts that would conflict with a person’s consciousness. It was because of the horror during the Nazi era which was what promoted him to carry on the experiment. This is how I gained interest in this particular experiment, as I was curious in knowing whether those kinds of behaviors can still be elicited or not in today’s world.