Stanley Milgram Set of Reading on Obedience

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Why so many people obey when they feel coerced? Social psychologist Stanley Milgram made an experiment to find the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded that people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to cooperate with the authority, even when acting against their own better judgment and desires. Milgram’s experiment illustrates that people's reluctance to confront those who abuse power. The point of the experiment was to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim, at what point will the subject refuse to obey the experimenter. One main question of the experiment was that how far the participant will comply with the experimenter’s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him? 2. In the experiment, participants were told they were involved in a learning experiment, that they were to administer electrical shocks and that they should continue to the end of the experiment. Participants can receive little money, four dollar and fifty cents, as benefit. There were three roles were involved, participants performed the teachers that actually being studied; one investigator performed the students who would be punished by electrical shock; another investigator performed the strict role who gave the orders when participants wanted to give up. During the course of the experiment, each time the ‘student’ made a mistake the participant was ordered to administer ever-increasing electrical shocks. Participants were not in fact delivering electrical shocks. The student was kept out of sight of the participant’s view, so they believed they were hurting the student. And they were told that towards the end of... ... middle of paper ... ...edience by authority, duty, even by the culture sometimes. People are fear to contradict the orders from leaders, because they fear to take responsibility for the result, like paying compensation, or being fired. As my friend’s example, she was limited by culture and the society in my country. In addition, I consider about the education system in my country. Most Chinese students are required to learning the knowledge by teachers and parents. It is right. However, the point is it is hard for students to doubt the things they are learning. For instance, after I study in America, I realized that there are lots of mistakes about English I learned in middle school. This mistake still exists in the middle school formal textbook, which my brother is learning. He told me that he has to learn by this way, because he won’t get grades if he answers question in the right way.

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