Brief Summary Of 'The Milgram Experiment'

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

Milgram (1963) conducted a study on obedience which investigated the extent people would obey to commands that involved harming individuals. There were 40 male participants from New Haven and the surrounding communities that partook in this study of learning and memory, at Yale University, by responding to a newspaper advert. The age range was between 20 and 50; and the participants’ occupation was diverse, ranging from unskilled to professional. Participants were paid $4.50 for entering the laboratory.

In his studies, Milgram discovered that sixty-five percent of the test subject followed through with the experiment when asked to continue. Milgram’s experiments made me question human kind, it’s known that people will hurt and even kill each other, however, can an ordinary person become a killer if put in a situation where killing is called for? Of course in a life or death situation a person may be able to kill another but the capabilities of doing so just because an authority figure told them to or when one is placed in surroundings where killing is obligatory, this is what got my

Milgram conducts an experiment to examine the act of obeying, and shows concrete instances. He pressures the subjects to behave in a way conflicting with morality. In the experiment, the experimenter orders the subject to give increasing electro shocks to an accomplice, when he makes an error in a learning session. The situation makes the subject

Although no such experiment can be 100% conclusive, the Milgram experiments do shed considerable (and disturbing) light on the behavior of ordinary people in obedience of authority. They also explain, to a large extent, the seemingly perplexing behavior of many ordinary Germans during World War II and some American soldiers in Vietnam. (“Milgram,” Obedience to Authority..).

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study has become one of the most timeless experiments and is thought of as a work of art. In this experiment, Milgram examined if individuals would take requests from authority figures regardless if they felt that the requests were ethical or not. Milgram chose members for this study by daily paper advertising for male participants to partake in an investigation at Yale University. In World War II, Nazis justified killings by saying that they were simply doing what they were told. Milgram conducted a study to examine whether the Nazi killings during World War II occurred because Germans were being submissive to authority figures. Milgram’s technique for this study raised moral issues because

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University, conducted a series of experiments on obedience to explain some of the concentration camp horrors perpetrated during World War II. He tested the subjects' willingness to cause pain to another person if instructed to by an authority figure.

Multiple arguments are made about Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments. Diana Baumrind, author of “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience” and a former psychologist at the University of California in Berkeley, strongly believes that Milgram’s experiments should not have taken place. Baumrind focuses on the aftermath of the experiment and how even when subjects were told that the screams they heard were merely recordings, participants experienced lasting effects (Baumrind 90). Ian Parker, author of “Obedience” and a writer for the New Yorker, also believes the trauma experienced by participants was unethical; some participants suffered from heart attacks after the experiment, and others were in therapy several years later when Milgram conducted a survey (Parker 98).

Milgram experiment shows us that ordinary people will most likely to conform to an authority figure, to the extent of hurting others. Adolf Eichmann is an example of authority figure who followed orders that cause millions of people to lose their lives. He was one of Adolf Hitler’s right hand that

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

Yale University Psychologist, Stanley Milgram (1963) demonstrated an experiment called the Milgram's experiment. It was meant to be about the study of obedience and what people would do when others were in pain, demand to stop the experiment or continue following orders. It took place in 1961 a year after world war II, Milgram wanted to make inquires about obedience and if that was the reason for the nazi killings, due to the Germans listening to their orders no matter what the situation was. "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974). Milgram chose 2 participants at a time one was a teacher and the other would be the learner the teacher would

Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”

Evaluation of Milgram's Obedience Study Stanley Milgram was from a Jewish background and conducted the experiment to see how people can obey to an apparent authority figure e.g. Germans in World War II. He advertised for participants in a newspaper offering payment of $4.50. Volunteers were told that the experiment was looking at the effects of punishment on learning. The participant played the role of the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ was a stooge, Mr Wallace.

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

Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.