Essay on Authority and Obedience

The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1963 by Stanley Milgram in order to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and to personal conscience. The experiment consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, and who’s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. The roles of this experiment included a learner, teacher, and researcher. The participant was deemed the teacher and was in the same room as the researcher. The learner, who was also a paid actor, was put into the next room and strapped into an electric chair. The teacher administered a test to the learner, and for each question that was incorrect, the learner was to receive an electric shock by the teacher, increasing the level of shock each time. The shock generator ranged from

In 1963 Milgram had his assistant show authority. Milgram at random choose people to act as teachers. These teachers were to administer electric shock to learners (Milgram’s colleagues). The learners had to memorize parts of words, if a mistake was made, the teachers would administer electric shock with the flip of a switch. More mistakes, led to higher voltage. As the experiment progressed, and voltage was increased, the learners began to scream and cry out. Even though the teachers faced moral dilemmas, when Milgram’s assistant told them to continue electric shock, over half of the teachers continued until the learners were presumably dead. (1)

From the beginning, society teaches us to respect and obey all rules given to us by authoritative figures. Through the schooling process, teachers reinforce this idea by giving students orders and expecting them to listen without question. We 've learned that disobedience connotes with “being bad” when this is not necessarily the case. Many adults today still carry these teaching into their adulthood. It is no wonder why leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin easily manipulated the minds of masses for their own personal and political agenda. Still, many questions still remain prevalent as to how an individual reaches his or her decision on obedience in a distressing environment. Inspired by Nazi trials, Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, questions the social norm in “Perils of Obedience” (1964), where he conducted a study to test how far the average American was willing to for under the pressures of an authority figure. Milgram 's study showed that under the orders of an authoritative figure, 64% of average Americans had the capability of projecting voluntary harm on another person. Nonetheless, Diana Baumrind, an American developmental psychologist, argues in “Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Stanley Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience” (1964), that the experiment conducted by Milgram was unethical, leaving the subjects distressed and emotionally vulnerable. Baumrind states that the subjects were inclined to follow orders due to the

In pursuit of information, he traveled to Paris, France and Oslo, Norway to study differing conformity rates between countries(Rogers 2016, p 3). Milgram found Norway and the US had similar conformity rates and the French conformed the least(Rogers 2016, p 3). After his graduation from Harvard in 1960, Milgram became an assistant professor at Yale, where he was able to further develop his interest in obedience (Rogers 2016, p 4). Living through WWII and the Holocaust with his Jewish heritage made Milgram more curious about obedience to authority and how it applied in this particular scenario (Blass 1998 page 3). This led Milgram to a question specific to the Holocaust;” Just how far would a person go under the experimenter's orders?” (Milgram 1977). This question became the basis for Milgram’s famous “shock experiments” . He was curious about what made these people commit lethal acts and what factors had influenced them in the process (Blass 1998 page 1). Although his question was specific to the Holocaust, his findings reveal general information and cannot be attributed to particular instances . He wanted to test how far people under the influence of an authority figure would go if they believed they were harming someone to the point of death (Slater 2004 page

Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted a classic study obedience in which the participants were forced to either violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure or to refuse those demands (Behrens 343). Milgram's study suggested that under a special set of circumstances the obedience we naturally show authority figures could transform us into agents of terror (343). His experiment showed that normal people could be influenced to the point of administering great amounts of pain on another human being, just because a person in a position of authority told them to do so (343). A theory that was reached as a result of Milgram's experiment was that "it is easy to ignore responsibility when one is only an intermediate link in a chain of action" (355). Milgram's results offer a possible explanation as to why the Nazis did what they did. Even though

In 1961 Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment in the effect authority figures had on peoples’ moral judgements. Two subjects, one fully informed about the experiment and one not, and an experimenter were involved. The informed subject was assigned the role of “learner”, while the uninformed one was the “teacher”. The “teacher” was given a list of word pairs to teach to the “learner”—if the “learner” got one wrong, the “teacher” would press a button that would supposedly give the “learner” an electric shock, which would increase by 15 volts for every wrong answer. (In reality, the electric shocks were fabricated.) If the “teacher” expressed unease at any point, the experimenter would try and convince them to continue. The process was halted when the “teacher” would refuse even after this convincing. 16 variations of this experiment were conducted throughout the world. The results were shocking. Two-thirds of the participants went up to 450 volts, the highest level. All of them used 300 volts.

Milgram’s study aimed to discover whether obedience to authority is beyond peoples control in certain situations - something which he later called the ‘agentic state’ a state of behaviour allowing the subject to obey someone else’s will. Milgram’s study has 18 variations, which aim to see if different set-ups of the experiment affect the results. In his original experiment, which took place in a laboratory at Yale university, the participant took on the role of the ‘teacher’, who was ordered by an ‘experimenter’ to administer electric shock’s from 30v to 450v to a ‘learner’, both of which were played by actors. The teacher and experimenter were separated by a wall from the learner. The learner was first asked to memorise a list of word pairs,

In this experiment participants would either be the teacher or the learner. The learned was strapped down to a shock chair and was challenged by the teacher to answer questions or understand different things by the teacher. If the learned failed to answer correctly they were automatically shocked and the more they got wrong the higher the voltage was. Milgram’s purpose of the experiment was to notice any increase in knowledge by the Learner. For example, did the learner try to answer more questions correctly considering the learner was getting

Milgram’s study of obedience was an experiment that looked at how ‘ordinary citizens obey the orders of an authority figure if those orders meant physically harming an innocent person’ (Milgram, 1974). He conducted ‘18 studies between 1960 and 1963’ so that he then could examine whether people would obey authority figures that involved giving innocent people electrical shocks of up to 450 volts. One of the studies was based on ’40 men, ranging from 20 to 50 and representing a cross section of occupations and educational roles in the USA.’ (Milgram, 1974). This study involved three people a learner, a teacher and an administrator. Milgram (1974) states that ‘each participant meet a middle aged man who was introduced as another participant but was actually a confederate’. The Learner and the teacher roles were taught by the participant to be chosen at random but it was rigged as the learner role was a confederate. The participant taught that this experiment was punishment on memory. So therefore ‘the

People are known to commit acts considered to be atrocious when they are told to by authoritative figures. The question is why; why would a seemingly non-violent person do something that acts against their morality unless urged to by an authoritative figure? As the average non-violent person does not often commit immoral acts without retaliating, the situation needs further inspection. In Stanley Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of Obedience” experiment, that is what Milgram sets to find out. The results indicate that authority figures can cause the average person to commit immoral acts such as torturing, due to the simple fact that they are an authoritative figure ("Replicating Milgram: Researcher Finds Most Will Administer Shocks to Others When Prodded by ‘Authority Figure’”). Notably, the three factors that seem probable for this type of behavior are blind-obedience, fear and conditioning. That is to say, people (as well as positions) perpetuate the use of these

Stanley Milgram (1963) was interested in how likely people would obey an authority figure who instructed them to harm another person. His study involved 40 male participants, aged 20 to 50, who were recruited through advertisements and mail solicitation. Participants had diverse occupations and educational levels. They came to a lab where they served as teachers in a supposed learning and memory experiment. A simulated shock generator with 30 switches was used. It was clearly marked with voltage levels and verbal designations ranging from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (danger: severe shock). The participants’ task was to administer an electric shock to the learner, a confederate of the experimenter, whenever he made an error in the memory test, increasing the intensity of shock each time. When the participant refused to administer a shock, the experimenter would give a series of prods to the participants to ensure that they continue with the experiment, even if they reached the marked danger of a severe shock, or heard the learner’s screams and pounding from an adjacent room. The experiment ended when the maximum voltage of shock had been delivered, or if the participant refused to continue any further. The maximum intensity shock a participant was willing to administer before he refused to participate any further was measured.

Participants were informed that the experiment would be for learning and memory study. In the study, the subject posed as the “teacher”, an actor played as the “learner” and Milgram was the experimenter (Explorable.com, 2008).Before the experiment commenced, the “learner” warned the experimenter and the “teacher” about his heart condition. Milgram also administered a 45 volt example to the “teacher” to prove that the shock generator was real. Under the watchful eye of the experimenter, the “teacher” will recite a sequence pair of words and the “learner” will try to remember it, if the “learner” gets it wrong he gets a shock and the voltage increases as he gets more words wrong. The teacher is under the impression that he’s shocking the “learner” when in fact it’s a pre-recorded voice and the shock generator is fake. If the “teacher” hesitates, the experimenter will urge him to go on (Romm, 2015). Milgram wanted to uncover if people will do what they’re told regardless of the pain they’re causing to another person. The experiment was focused on the conflict of personal conscience and authority (Baker,

The teachers were then taken to another room with a scientist, where they could hear but not see the learners. The learners were asked a series of questions and if a wrong answer was given the teacher was asked to give an electric shock, of increasing power with each incorrect answer, as punishment. While many of the participants seemed unhappy with carrying out this task none of them stopped, especially after the scientist present said that it was their duty to continue this action, and in fact many increased the voltage to levels none of the experimenters predicted.

In his article, “The Perils of Obedience” Stanley Milgram explore the issue of obedience to have a better understanding of why the Nazi-Germans hurt the Jews in the Holocaust. Milgram's claim that obedience is as an element in the structure of social life (62). He believes that submission to authority is something that runs humanity. Miligram comes up with an experiment in a teacher-student setting where the teacher inflicts pain to the student if they fail to answer a question wrong.

In “Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram talks about obedience as a basic element in society. He reinforces this prevalent theme included in our everyday lives by sharing the results of an experiment he orchestrates at Yale University. The goal of the experiment was to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person just because somebody with higher authority instructed them to do so. In this case the ordinary citizen is the naïve subject who acts as the teacher and administers shocks to a victim, who is actually just an actor. Milgram highlights four subjects; Gretchen Brandt, Fred Prozi, Morris Braverman, and Bruno Batta. Through his organization style and dialogue Milgram progressively makes the reader ponder how they would react if they were to be in the experiment themselves.