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summary of review of stanley milgram experiments on obedience
summary of review of stanley milgram experiments on obedience
what was the stanley milgram experiment
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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 …show more content…
According to Wes Bertrand, author of "Abstract", states that "the degree of self- responsibility practiced by a person drastically affects his or her level of obedience to unjust commands" (Bertrand). Milgram related his experiment with Hitler 's Germany by relating that "the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-b into gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the ground that he was only following orders from above" (Milgram 89). Baumrind supports his statement coming from one point of view; she argues that because Hitler made the Jews sound subhuman and not worth the extra effort, a subordinate officer slaughtering the Jews has no need to feel guilt because he was acting right within his frame of reference" (Baumrind 93). In agreement with Baumrind claiming the Jews were made subhuman, the article "German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1945" explains how they took their belongings claiming to use them to produce weapons for the war, the level of obedience and officers acting as they were ordered to by their superiors was necessary or tragedy might strike them as well.If what Diana Baumrind says is true, she is supporting Milgram by saying that the officer was acting right because he was told so, rather than disputing him; like the experiment when the experiment when the experimenter asked the teacher to continue with the
However, all of the participants continued to administer up to three-hundred volts. These were everyday “normal” people that functioned successfully in society. Slater had the opportunity to interview one of the participants of Milgram’s experiment, one which happened to follow through with the shocks all the way to the very last one. During the interview the participant stated, “You thought you were really giving shocks, and nothing can take away from you the knowledge of how you acted” (Slater, 59). These words came from the mouth of an “average joe” that never knew what he was capable of before the experiment. With these words, we are reminded that we are not as “nice” as we’d like to think we
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 “ 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 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.
Milgram and Zimbardo are classified in the same category as behaviorists. Although they are locked in the same category, they are famously known for very different experiments that have somewhat of the same idea. Zimbardo is widely known for his Stanford prison experiment, while Milgram is known for obedience to authority. The goal of both experiments was to prove like Haney has said that evil is most generally generated through evil situations. Zimbardo and Milgram’s experiments are examples of Psychological situationism, which is pretty important in the work of social psychology. Salamucha finds that Milgram and Zimbardo’s work demonstrates that, sometimes, the power of situations can be overpowering.
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
Their prediction is that only a minute number of participants will go through the highest shocking volts (the range was from zero to 3 out of 100, with an average of 1.2). Since most subjects were convinced that the experiment is to study the effects of punishment on memory, they believe that the experimental situation is real. The subjects also believe that they were inflicting pain on the victim every time they administer a shock volt. Although the subjects were enlighten about the procedure, and what is required of them, the aspect of the false identity of the victim was unknown. None of them was aware that the learner is a trained confederate of the experiment. Therefore, the subject’s idea about the experiment being real creates emotional discomfort in behavior and surprising genuine observational results. Twenty-six subjects obeyed the experimental commands fully by administering the highest level of shock though many were very uncomfortable doing so. Fourteen broke off the experiment after the learning refuses to participate further (Milgram,
Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience set out to exhibit the degree to which individuals take after the instructions of authority figures. Forty male volunteers between the ages of 20 and 50 were informed that they were associated with a learning test and were coordinated to control electric stuns by flipping a switch when the performing artist in a different room reacted with a wrong answer. Unbeknownst to the members, the performing artist was really not being stunned but rather was going about as however he might have been.
In the article "The Perils of Obedience" Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, recounts an experiment where he tested how people's obedience varies under extreme circumstances. He discovered having a higher authority in the room dramatically increases obedience (Milgram 88). Meanwhile, in the article "Obedience," Ian Parker, a British writer, is not as quick to jump to conclusions as Milgram. Instead, Parker cites needed information that is missing from Milgram's article. In Stanley Milgram's infamous 1963 experiment, he investigates precisely how far people will go to hurt someone, while still obeying orders from an authority figure. Although it is torture, a portion of the people continue to administer pain upon the test subjects because they are being obedient and following orders. Milgram and Parker both convey strong arguments for their respective points, despite disagreeing on several matters.
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.
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.
The basic experiment consisted of a teacher, a learner, and an administrator. The learner was strapped into a chair and the teacher read him/her words and the learner had to know what word to pair it with. Whenever the learner answered incorrectly, the administrator instructed the teacher to shock the learner with a volt of electricity. As the learner continued to respond inaccurately, the teacher had to execute shocks with higher and higher voltage causing greater and greater pain for the learner. About 60% of all “teachers” obeyed the entire time, giving the highest voltage and most painful shock (Milgram 80). British writer Ian Parker in “Obedience” analyzes Milgram’s life and his experiment. He questions the true purpose of the experiment and wonders if it really tested obedience and morals or situational
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.