How Can The Power Of Situations And Individual Conscience Affect Your Decision Making?

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.

In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.

The participants seated themselves around a table, these confederates were not known to each other, and most important concept of this experiment relied on the fact all of the participants were working together, but for one. They took turns in a fixed order to call out publicly which of three comparison lines was the same length as a standard line on the left card. In reality only one person was a naive participant who answered second to last, the rest were experimental confederates instructed to give erroneous responses.

In the experiment, people were picked randomly and one as a teacher and one as the student. They were told to take a quiz and give electric shocks of increasing intensity as punishment if the student can’t answer. During the experiment, many people were concerned as someone can be heard shouting but only a few people who decided to stop and stick to their morals. But the others kept on going because they were just following orders from a superior (Milgram 77). "The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, is about an experiment that was made to understand the roles people play in prison situations. For the experiment, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. The participants were told to act as prisoners and guards. It was planned to be a two-week experiment but was forced to shut down in 6 days, all because of people quickly getting into their roles and started acting like the real prisoners and guards (Zimbardo 104). To compare both experiments, although they differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim. Also how people obey under authoritative circumstances, when given power or different roles, however the writers differ in the seriousness of the fight for individuality and the use of reality.

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the 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). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

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.

The two studies being analyzed today are the Stanly Milgram experiment and the Slater experiment. The two similar experiments yielded information about obedience to authority that explains the correlation in society between authority, obedience, and morality. Despite the major ethical problems in the Milgram experiment, it is known in social psychology today that human beings will follow orders from authority figures even to the extent of inflicting harm on another. However, even with this fact, it is also known that there is limits to such obedience.

Social psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, has lead one of the most infamous experiments in the modern history with the Stanford Prison Experiment. The immense popularity of the experimental research on situational power, although having cultivated great recognition, has overshadowed the multiple contributions and accomplishments that Zimbardo continues to assume in his lifetime. Many of Zimbardo’s recognitions have been brought upon due to the Stanford Prison Experiment, yet in this paper will extensively examine Zimbardo’s psychological career from the beginning to the current date to recognize his notable influence in the field of Psychology, specifically the field of Social Psychology. This brief review of Zimbardo’s lengthy career will include various facts and personal accounts of Zimbardo’s regarding his life and work. Zimbardo’s lifetime of work has mainly focused and researched the multiple flaws of human’s beings, and it’s through his findings that society is truly able to progress forward positively. Zimbardo’s long career exemplifies that of an unrestricted devotion; he has and still works to better society through its various flaws, making him undoubtably impactful.

Compared to the Milgram Experiment, one could easily argue that the prisoners suffered from far more anxiety and trauma that the “teachers” who instituted electrical shocks. However, as one might hate as much to admit, but the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment outweigh the risks. Not only did it bring to light many natural tendencies and moral issues of human beings, but also that it was this experiment, along with the Milgram Experiment, the revolutionized the ethical guidelines of human experimentation. While these two experiments may be considered among the darkest experiments in the history of psychology, it is important to acknowledge what they have also brought to

This report will compare two experiments; Asch 's conformity experiment and Milgram 's obedience experiment. The two experiments will be compared for validity and their ethics. In addition, this report will take into consideration Zimbardo 's Stanford Prison experiment and the Lucifer Effect. To analyse how obedience and conformity theories can be used as an example of why good people can turn bad. This report will also look at how obedience and conformity can be applied to the criminal justice system.

Shows us much about the dull side of human brain research. the straightforwardness with which we go under the influence of an authority, and the readiness of many individuals to suspend normal guidelines of profound quality and heart when requested to do as such and hand over the obligation regarding their activities to another. Even the most ordinary Person who in most possible conditions could never dream of harming another person, appear to be exasperatingly vulnerable to this imperfection. This experiment relates to Adolf Eichmann who played a role in executing Jews in the Holocaust In his execution he states he was only following orders given by Hitler and was being obedient to authority. The most surprising thing in the Experiment would

In addition, classic experiments often carry out in an artificial laboratory environment in which causing low validity and confound the‬. The tight control over the experiment may lead not be able to generalize the results into real life situation or replicable. In this case, such studies may mislead people and it is not worth to be focused. In the study of Asch (1951), a group of eight individuals (7 confederates and 1 naïve participant) sat in a room and they were asked which of three unequal vertical lines matched the given one. The study has low validity ecological validity as it was carried out under controlled

One might think that this experiment will stimulate the new research in the area of human obedience, but this did not occur. Despite the difficulties and the courage of Burger to conduct a partial replication of the original study, it did not produce any different outcomes and did not spark any new ideas in psychology (Burger, 2009). Instead, the researcher had to deal with an enormous amount of different commentaries and controversy. My main rationale for disapproving the Burger’s study is ethical characteristics of the Milgram paradigm. More specifically, now we have the Ethical Rules of the APA, which tell us that researchers should honor rights of participants to privacy, confidentiality and the right to withdraw the experiment. However, Milgram’s paradigm clearly challenges these fundamental rights and creates even more ethical dilemmas. Another rationale that I can include is the infliction of increasing pain on an unwilling participant, a characteristic that is unacceptable in modern psychological studies. Therefore, I would disapprove such experiment, because of ethical non-compliance and little contribution to the field. As for me, I view following ethical practices in my dissertation project work as a crucial element for success. It will allow me to produce reliable, meaningful and relevant scholarly data that would not be a subject to ethical

The independent variables were easily controlled and there weren’t many external factors which could interfere with it. Participants completed the experiment inside an empty classroom which also helped remove any possible interference from the experimental environment. Unfortunately, there can be some criticism towards the experiment that we have conducted. Firstly, all our participants were grade 9 IB students from one school. This results in sample bias due to the fact that it cannot be correlated to general population. Unfortunately, it would be very inconvenient and difficult to conduct an experiment with adults, students and different cultures for generalized results. Participants were all friends of the same class and sat beside each other during the experiment. This may lead to possibilities of chatting and looking over at other answers. This in turn would reflect upon the idea of conformity, having participants give us dishonest results. The original Loftus and Palmer experiment was quickly criticized by Yuille and Cutshall (1986), who stated that the experiment lacks ecological validity because it is performed in an artificial environment. Also, the experiment conducted involves a scenario that participants are not physically witnessing. If participants were to witness the experiment in reality or be somewhat

They are given several minutes to explore. Students must find a desirable question to research and conduct the experiment based on their observations.