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Essay On Milgram Experiment

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Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find out how far people would go in obeying instructions if it included harming another person. This experiment was also trying to prove how easily an ordinary person could be influenced into committing atrocities such as the Nazi killings in World War II (McLeod, 2007). The experiment was first advertised in the newspaper to look for male participants for the experiment and they were paid $4.50 for participating the experiment which were conducted at Yale University. In the experiment, a participant is assigned with the role of a ‘teacher’ and they were paired up with another person (one of Milgram’s confederates) who took the role as a ‘learner’ (McLeod, 2007). The ‘learner’ were placed inside …show more content…

This obedience occurred even though the learner had mention at first before the experiment that he has a heart problem and demanded to be released during the experiment (Feldman, 2013). Most of the participants continued sending the shocks even though the learner was screaming and shouting. During the experiment many of the participants were uncomfortable and angry at the experimenter and yet they still continued following instructions until the end of the experiment (Cherry, n.d.). These participants had believed that the experimenter would be held responsible for any potential after effects of the experiment and not them therefore continued sending shocks to the learner in the experiment (Feldman, 2013). The results of this experiment has suggested that ordinary people would obey orders given by an authority even though it includes harming another person because they had the mindset of just following orders and not being personally held responsible for any the possible negative outcomes. Although this experiment shows that situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience, there are other psychologists claim that obedience is greatly affected by both physical and mental factors such as personal beliefs and total character (Cherry,

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