Evaluate The Milgram Experiment

A while after receiving his doctorate, Milgram began studying the justifications of genocide, in particular the case of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was responsible for countless war crimes associated with the Nazis, however he claimed that him and all of his accomplices were simply following orders. A year after Eichmann’s trial, Milgram had set out to find the answer to his new found question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974). It is this underlying question that supported the entire experiment, essentially a study focusing on the conflicts between obedience to authority and personal conscience. As in, would you harm a person if you were told to do so by someone with high authority? The experiments began in July of 1961, at Yale University, when Milgram began a search for participants, by publishing a short advertisement in a newspaper.

In the beginning of chapter two, where Lauren is describing a setup for the reader is something I really like as the opening. Instead of going in and start introducing the experiments that Milgram did, Lauren made it if I was the one who was experimented on. I also mentioned that I like how she made the reader become mice to understand the experiment last week. I believe this is going to be a common recurring theme within this book since it helps me to understand the chapter that I’m reading.

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 was interested on learning if people would hurt someone if given instructions to do so, Stanley Milgram recruited 40 males, ages ranging between 20 and 50 with jobs varying from unemployed to professionals. The participants drew straws to determine their positions (Learner or Teacher) although this was rigged so an actor was chosen as the learner every time and the volunteer as the teacher. As the learner got a question wrong the teacher would administer a shock, each wrong question the intensity of

People can change in a position of power from being normal to crazed. In the milgram experiment uses students from yale university were used to show a relation between position of power and being evil, the experiment showed that there was a relation. Saul Mcleod conveys through the article "THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT" that people put in positions of power, are more likely to be cruel to the people they are in power of. The other experiment the stanford experiment was to see how many people would kill another person when instructed to someone of a higher stature. The article by Saul Mcleod shows how people are suseptable of murdering someone when another person is to blame. Both articles show that positions of power can make people do insane

Milgram wanted to know if the solders that were involved in the tragic Holocaust willingly were a part of slaughtering more than six million people in the concentration camps. Were the solders psychopaths, or were they just doing as they were told? Werhane also informed that the experiment took place at Yale University in 1960 that consisted of three participants, one was said to be the teacher, the second was the experimenter, and the third was the learner. Although it appeared to the teacher that the roles were assigned by drawing lots, the roles were pre-determined. The teacher was told that the experiment was to help understand the effect of punishment on

Another instance where V 's actions harm innocent people without caring was when he ordered innocent people to wear Guy Fawkes masks and march to the parliament to watch the explosion. These citizens could have been killed by the military officers who waited for orders to strike though no orders were given. If V was a revolutionary, he could have found the way of making a statement without risking the lives of the innocent citizens. His evil actions present him as a rebel against the government and his fellow citizens. He also states that ‘ 'violence could be used for good. ' ' V 's actions of not caring about the others were the same as compared to Stanley Milgram experiment actions. The subjects in this experiment were suffering, but the experimenter did nothing to relieve the students the pain. Instead, he urged the teachers to continue to torture the students knowing very well they were suffering from the high voltage. The teachers played the sadist role as they agreed as they completely obeyed the experimenter 's instructions. V 's evil actions also present him as a sadist by enjoying hurting people and killing the ones who were in charge of the experiments.

Is Milgram justified in detailing a possible connection between his experiment and the Holocaust shortly after it happened? Diana Baumrind inclines towards disagreeing with him; however, she is not immediately discernible on whether she agrees with him which detracts from her overall effectivity. Baumrind believes Milgram’s subjects were concerned about their victims thus breaking the parallel between his experiment and the genocide in the Holocaust (Baumrind 93). A recollection of chronological events of the Holocaust created by the University of South Florida effectually refutes Baumrind’s belief by stating the “death camps proved to be a less personal method for killing Jews” (Florida Center for Instructional Technology). If the Nazis were making the death camps less personal, then Milgram is justified in providing the Nazis as examples in his experiment report because if his subjects continued to obey when they were concerned with the victims, then why would they reverse their decision to obey if the victim was made less personal? Milgram could have been slightly more effective and fair by acknowledging the difference between his experiment and Nazi Germany in that in his experiment the subject had no interaction with the experimenter beforehand while the Nazi Party built obedience towards them for almost a decade before they started to systematically abuse the power of

During the Holocaust many Germans stated that they where only following what their superiors commanded them to do. So Stanly Milgram, a psychologist, performed an experiment to see if the individual is responsible for their actions when they are told what to do and are given reassurance that they are not responsible for their actions. Stanly Milgram did an advertisement in the paper and paid volunteers just to show up for an experiment. The volunteers were told that the experiment was on memory and learning. The test subjects where paired up with one another without knowing that those they paired up with are actually actors. The test was staged so that the one subject was a teacher and the actor was the student. They put the student in a room and strapped him to a chair with a shock generator. The teacher was in a separate room with the experimenter and was directed to shock the student 15 voltes higher for every questions the student got wrong. After several times some of the teachers asked the experimenter who is responsible if anything would happen to the learner. The Experimenter stated that “I am responsible”. Several test subjects shocked their learner to

Empowering Morality Everyday, people make countless decisions—what to eat, say, do, etc.—but most decisions that appear to be chosen by oneself is partially chosen by others around them. Society influences individuals into conforming their personalities to a held standard, creating numerous clones that are not capable of thinking independently. However, the few that are capable of standing up for what is right are often scrutinized or outcasted from society, subsequently pressuring many into thoughtlessly following the crowd. This is unwise, for the crowd may be mistreating a minority group or may be contradicting with one’s moral beliefs. The Milgram Experiment Revisited, The Wave, and Night emphasize the importance of fully standing by one’s beliefs instead of following the status quo as it is often times fallacious and unjust.

Ben Ross showed his students a documentary about the Holocaust. He was upset when he realized that his students asked question about the Holocaust that he couldn't explain. As he wanted his stundents to have a better understanding on this topic, he decided to start an experiment that would help his students to learn how it was possible for the Nazis gaining control without someone stopping them.

What determines how one behaves? Is it character, situation, both, or neither? In a series of experiments conducted from 1960 to 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram sought to examine the relationship between obedience and authority, in order to examine justifications offered by Nazis for genocide during WWII. While there are several interpretations of Milgram’s results, philosopher Ruwen Ogien uses the results as grounds for criticizing virtue ethics as a moral theory. In doing so, Ogien suggests that “what determines behavior is not character but other factors tied to situation” (Ogien 120). The purpose of this essay is to articulate why I am not persuaded by Ogien’s use of the Milgram experiments to critique virtue ethics.

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.”

Stanley Milgram’s original “six degrees of separation” experiment was flawed because it did not account for key factors that are essential to statistical experimentation. An example of the key factors that Milgram failed to consider in his experiment is the sampling method. Using a voluntary response sample Milgram formulated his conclusions. However, as often happens with voluntary response samples, the experiment’s success depended completely on who participated thus skewing the actual accuracy of the “six degrees of separation” that Milgram claimed resulted from the the findings of his original experiment. Furthermore, Milgram’s sample method carried over in how he started the letter trains. Instead of randomly selecting cities from which to start the letter trains, Milgram started all 60 letters by sending 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.