Compare And Contrast Milgram Experiment And The Stanford Prison Experiment

In Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram reports from his studies of how far an individual can go in obedience to instructions and he pointed out that individuals can go as far as causing serious harm to the other people. Basically, the experiments are meant to test the choice that an individual would make when faced with the conflict of choosing between obedience to authority and obedience to one’s conscience. From the tests, it was found out that a number of people would go against their own conscience of choosing between what is wrong and what is right so as to please the individual in authority (Milgram 317). However, the experiments conducted by Milgram caused a wide range of controversy for instance; according to Diana Baumrind, the experiments were immoral. Baumrind notes in ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that Milgram did not only entrap his subjects, but he also potentially caused harm to his subjects (Baumrind 329). Based on the arguments that have been presented by the two authors, it is apparent that the two authors are concerned with real life situations, authority and ethics but the difference is that they both view these perspectives from different points of view as indicated by their writings. By and large, they also tend to show the importance or the insignificance of the experiments.

When individuals disregard their freedom for the good of the whole, they are no longer considered individuals but products of conformity. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, engineered an experiment to test the ordinary person’s level of obedience. Many of Milgram’s colleagues admired his intricate experiment, and thought that he provided valid information on the complexity of obedience. One of his colleagues, Diana Baumrind, however, strongly disagreed with Milgram and has good reasons to criticize his experiment. She thought his experiment was unethical and very harmful to the social well-being of the participants. In her article, “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”, she castigated Milgram’s experiment and provided

Having power makes people think that they don’t have to listen to anybody and they can do anything that they want. In The Stanford Prison Experiment it says “ within hours of beginning the experiment guards began to harass prisoners. In The Man In The Well paragraph 3 says how they don’t go get the man a ladder when they said they were going too. In The Stanford Prison Experiment it also says how the prisoners started to act like the guards and get other prisoners in trouble for irrelevant things.

“That line between good and evil is permeable,” a psychologist from Stanford University by the name of Zimbardo once said. “Any of us can move across it… I argue that we all have the capacity for love and evil — to be Mother Theresa, to be Hitler or Saddam Hussein” (qtd. In Dittmann). Social psychologist Zimbardo implies that we can easily swap from side to side. What factors elicit darkness? What draws out the darkness, making us jump from good to bad? There are many views in the society that attempt to tackle this question. For instance, social psychology and philosophy. Social psychology tends to side with situation and or authority. On the other hand, philosopher John Locke is certain that the accumulation of experiences is the cause. What is the ultimate answer?

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was study organized by Philip George Zimbardo who was a professor at Stanford University. Basically, SPE was a study of psychological effect. He studied about how personality and environment of a person effect his behaviour. Experiment he performed was based on prison and life of guards. He wants to find out whether personality get innovated in person according to given environment (situational) or due to their vicious personalities that is violent behaviour (dispositional). The place where the whole experiment was set up Philip Zimbardo and his team was Stanford University on August 14Th to August 20th in the year 1971 (Wikipedia).

Humanity will always question the idea of obedience. Two prestigious psychologists, Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo, conducted practical obedience experiments with astonishing results. Shocked by the amount of immoral obedience, both doctors wrote articles exploring the reasoning for the test subjects ' unorthodox manners. In "The Perils of Obedience" by Milgram and "The Stanford Prison Experiment" by Zimbardo, the professionals reflect their thoughts in a logical manner. Milgram 's experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and experimenter: the teacher was the test subject and was commanded to administer a shock by the experimenter. Upon switching the generator on, the learner-who was actually an actor-would jerk, cry, and occasionally seem unconscious. Expecting most subjects to stall the experiment, Milgram witnessed the exact opposite. Zimbardo, on the other hand, staged a mock prison, whereas half the subjects were guards and the other half were prisoners. Every test subject knew they were in an experiment and complied with the two week trial. However, the majority of the test subjects-particularly the guards-found themselves fitting into the mock prison all too well: abusing, insulting, and yelling obscenities at prisoners was commonplace, compelling many prisoners to appear insane. The driving force for immoral obedience is contributed to several factors: As seen in the film A Few Good Men by director Rob Reiner, when obedience causing harm undergoes

Throughout time, history and studies strongly suggest that environment plays a key role in human behavior. This even includes compromising ones moral compass to follow an authority figure or how one might use their power in the environment they are in. Studies such as the Millgram Experiment in 1962 to the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 were two similar studies that showed how easily people are swayed from what they think is right and wrong. In the novella of Fredrick Douglass, his autobiography proves the results of the studies. In all the environments that Fredrick Douglass experienced, he witness the power of authority first hand.

In Maria Konnikova’s “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” she reveals what she believes to be the reality of sociologist Philip Zimbardo’s controversial study: its participants were not “regular” people.

Over 4 decades ago, a Stanford psychology professor named Phillip G. Zimbardo administered an experiment that re-created a prison environment. The goal of the experiment was to simply study the process by which prisoners and guards “learn” to become compliant and authoritarian, respectively (Zimbardo 732). What would emerge from the “Stanford Prison Experiment” article were more than just compliance and authority. The experiment gave rise to the nature of evil and obedience in human beings. Thus like Zimbardo’s experiment, Stanley Milgram’s “The Peril of Obedience” found that under certain circumstances and conditions, human beings were also capable of being immensely subdued to

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..).

The Stanford prison experiment was unique because they wanted to watch and learn the behaviors of a prisoner and a prison guard, observing the effects they found some pretty disturbing things among the students. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University stayed true to what they believed, and they did what they felt they needed to do to find a set of results for their simulation. Unfortunately they where swallowed into the experiment, when they became the roles, just as the students where. So from their point of view I want to say that what they where doing was ethical, and being that the prison experiment was stopped before its half way mark showed that they realized that it was time to call it quits. Dr. Zimbardo noticed

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

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.

This report on the Stanford Prison Experiment will define the ethical issues related to prisoner treatment and prison culture in a mock scenario created 1971. The findings of this study define the inclination towards corruption and riotous behavior within the overarching relationship between guard and the prisoners. In a short period of time,. The prisoners became hostile and sought to start a riot in order to free themselves from abuses of the prison guards. In some instances, the issue of role-playing limited to reality of the event, but the ethical issues related to issue of prison corruption became evident in the study. The Stanford Prison Experiment provided some important aspects on how good people can became violent lawbreakers within the orison system. In essence, the ethical and experimental conditions of the Stanford Prison experiment define the corrupting culture of prisons in American society during the early 1970s.

During the Stanford prison experiment video I did notice a few similarities of a particular experience I had when I was in the Marines, that experience was just how putting on a certain uniform can alter the way a person. A uniform of authority can shift the way a person acts or even behaves oppose to not wearing a uniform of authority. when you’re not covering your identity with some article of clothing you hold an image that you want to try and protect and an image that is relatively consistent to your normal behavior, however when you shield that self-image and put let’s say a mask over which conceals your identity that can completely change everything about you including the way you conduct yourself.