1. In Stanley Milgram’s original experiment where he studied the potential of a person to physically harm another when told to do so by an authority figure, he assigned three roles: experimenter, teacher, and learner. The experimenter and learner were complicit in the experiment’s intended goal to measure the threshold at which a person would disobey a command to administer increasing levels of shock treatment. The shock treatment was presented to the teacher as having 15 level increments ranging from 15-450 volts, with descriptions from “slight shock” to “danger: severe shock.” The experiment was disguised as an attempt to study the effects of punishment on memorization of word groups, and involved the unknowing teacher to inflict fake shock treatment at increasing intervals upon the actor-learner upon their delivery of an …show more content…
I think there are other factors to consider, though. Another possible explanation can be the fear of punishment or the desire for reward. When it comes to work and doing one’s duty, there is the reward that comes with doing it properly, and I think a lot of the participants in the Milgram experiment wanted to achieve that. I also think many of the teachers were afraid of compromising the integrity of the experiment. In addition, there is a certain level of prestige that the experimenters had, and which commanded obedience. It is assumed that people who are in positions of authority deserve it, but what some people do not take into account is that everyone errs and nobody is perfect, and that sometimes people fail people. I think some of the participants thought the research was a worthy endeavor, or that the experimenters knew better. They got lost, and saw themselves as subordinates with a
In Milgram's opinion the teachers continued because they were told they were not responsible for whatever happens to the learner, he states “Experimenter: i'm responsible for anything that happens to him ( Milgram 81).” Milgram says, “Teachers were the ones inflicting pain but still did not feel responsible for their act ( Milgram 83).” Also Milgram says “ they often liked the feeling they get from pleasing the experimenter (Milgram 86).” However Baumrind believes that the teachers only followed orders because they trusted to experimenter. Baumrind states, “The subject has the right to expect that the Psychologist with whom he is interacting has some concern for his welfare, and the personal attributes and professional skill to express his good will effectively ( Baumrind 94).” When Baumrind tells the readers this she means that she thinks the teachers believe that that the experimenter would not let anything bad happen to the
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
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
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...
Scientist tell people they are doing a test on the effects of punishment on learning, but the real
The original study took place at Yale University. Milgram came up with an advertisement to gain participants to contribute to his study. He offered them four dollars and told them it was a study about memory. Three people took place during each experiment. The three subjects were the experimenter the “learner” and the “teacher”. The experimenter was a dressed as a biology teacher and the “learner” was trained to act out his role. Of the three participants the teacher was only person that didn’t know about the actual study. The “teacher” and the “learner” were placed in separate rooms so that they were unable to see one another. The teacher’s role was to ask the “learner” a number of questions and punish the “learner”” for answering incorrectly. The “teacher” was advised to issue a shock to the “learner” each time he answered incorrectly. The participant was also told to administer +15-volts of shock for each additional question answered incorrectly.
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 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
Milgram answers the question of why this problem occurred in our pasts, for example during the Holocaust, and still occurs within ourselves. The experiment unfortunately illustrates that it is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only a link in a chain of action in a multifaceted society. People feel is their duty or their job to obey an authority figure without realizing that nobody can make another individual do something they feel is not right.
Firstly, the experiment took place at Yale University, which creates an atmosphere of credibility and importance. Those participating were also lead to believe that their contribution went to a worthy cause – to advance knowledge and understanding of learning processes. They were also told that the victim (the learner), was taking part voluntarily meaning they had an obligation to fulfill even if it became unpleasant, (also applies to the teacher). Additionally, the volunteers were being paid which created a further sense of commitment to the investigation. Those who took part also had little knowledge about how psychological experiments ran, as Milgram’s study was most likely the first one they ever partook in. Therefore they had little knowledge about the rights and expectations of the situation, and felt more confined than if they had been through a similar experience prior. The participant was also under the impression that the roles of being the teacher or learner were assigned randomly, so there were no feelings of unfairness in the system. The partakers had also been assured that the shocks were “painful but not dangerous” and that the procedure was all part of a worthy long term cause (Holah). Lastly, the victim responded to all of the questions until the 300 Volt was reached, convincing the participant of their willingness and persistence to
The Milgram experiment of the 1960s was designed to ascertain why so many Germans decided to support the Nazi cause. It sought to determine if people would be willing to contradict their conscience if they were commanded to do so by someone in authority. This was done with a psychologist commanding a teacher to administer an electric shock to a student each time a question was answered incorrectly. The results of the Milgram experiment help to explain why so many men in Nazi Germany were recruited to support the Nazi cause and serve as a warning against the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the United States government.
In the early 1960’s Stanley Milgram (1963) performed an experiment titled Behavioral Study of Obedience to measure compliance levels of test subjects prompted to administer punishment to learners. The experiment had surprising results.
...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...
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.