Ke’Asjah Spencer Milgram Study Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a 1963 experiment that originated from the idea of Germans being highly obedient to authority figures, and whether that played a role in the Nazi killings during World War II. The purpose of the experiment was to see if ordinary people, under an immense amount of pressure by an authority figure, would still be obedient regardless of whether something detrimental would happen because of a person’s submissiveness. The researchers had a goal of seeing how far someone would go in adhering to a highly-regarded figure, regardless of if the teacher, as the participants were referred to in the experiment, had to harm their “learner” or …show more content…
The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding an explanation. Considering the aim of this experiment and the way the volunteers acted, the objective of this experiment was achieved. According to Discover Magazine, in the first version of the experiment, 65% of participants who obeyed the orders went on to 450 volts, which had been the electric shock machine’s maximum voltage. With this large percentage in mind, if the participants had not been pressured to follow through with the electric shocks or they found it to be morally wrong and was able to speak up and withdraw, several participants would have disobeyed. Due to this, depending on who obeyed and disobeyed, the experimenters achieved their objective, but with some objection. Discover Magazine states that the major headline of 65% of participants that went to 450 volts, the first version of the experiment that was reported in Milgram’s first journal article, implied that there was only a single experiment done. However, there were 24 different variations, or different scenarios with a different script and set up for the experiment. In over half of the 24 versions of the experiment, 60% of people disobeyed
(2009) replicates Milgram’s infamous obedience experiment in order to explore the concept of obedience in modern society. According to Burger (2009), although Milgram’s obedience studies pushed ethical boundaries, the results from his experiments had a profound effect on social psychology in regards to obedience (p.1). In the article, Burger argues against the claim that the Milgram experiment psychologically damaged its participants. In response to critiques he states that the results from the follow-up questionnaires Milgram gave to the participants show that they were happy to have taken part in the study. Nevertheless, Milgrams study generated a debate about
2. A. The research was conducted by first paying his participants $4.50 ($30 today) to come in and take part in the experiment. The group of participants he selected was composed of 40 males between 20 and 50 who were told that the experiment was to test the effect of “punishment on learning“. There was 15 skilled-unskilled workers, 16 white-collar employees, and 9 professionals. Apart from them, there were 2 key participants, a confederate, who was actually a 47 year-old accountant and an actor who dressed as the experimenter. He decided to test the power of obedience in a laboratory which was clever on Milgram’s part. He designed a realistic looking fake scenario, complete with a shock chair and men dressed in lab coats. The most realistic component was the fake shock generator that actually quite scary-looking. It had levels of shock that went up from 30 to 450 volts and the levels were labeled to describe the intensity of the shock. The participants
Many various members of the populace who believed that only a few would rais it to the highest level of 450 volts, were wrong in their predictions. The majority of subjects obeyed the experimenters' orders to the very end of the experiment by administering the highest voltage three times. As the first experiments were conducted on Yale undergraduates, some believed that the results were inconclusive due to the competitive nature of the students. However, the results of the experiment were the same when Milgram tested "ordinary" people. When the experiments were repeated in other areas of the world, the level of obedience was even higher than those
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
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.
The Milgram experiment was performed by the sociologist Stanley Milgram to discover the power of authority. In this experiment, Stanley was trying to demonstrate the willingness people have to follow orders from an authority figure. Even thought the results of this experiment were very surprising, I think that this kind of experiments would allows us to study and understand better the human’s nature. This experiment showed a side of human’s nature that was unknown by the scientistic community, and this is the reason why we need to perform more experiment like this one.
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
In his article "The Perils of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to determine if the innate desire to obey an authority figure overrides the morality and consciousness that had been already established in a person. After Milgram conducted his experiments he concluded that 60% of the subjects complied to an authority figure rather than their own sympathy. There was additional testing outside the US which showed an even higher compliance rate. Milgram reasoned that the subjects enjoyed the gratification from the experimenter, who was the authority figure in the experiment. He noted that most of the subjects are "proud" to carry out the demands of the experimenter. Milgram believed for that reason, why the
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment on a group’s obedience to authority. This experiment has encountered intense scrutiny ever since its findings were first published in 1963; many people question the ethics and validity of the experiment. Multitudes of researchers have taken it upon themselves to determine the answers to the questions (McLeod). Based on new guidelines for ethics, Stanley Milgram’s experiment on the obedience to authority was neither ethical nor valid.
The Stanley Milgram Obedience experiment is an experiment to replicate Nazis following Hitler’s orders to kill Jews in World War II. Whereas, in this experiment, forty males were recruited to complete this study; they were told it was a memory and learning experiment. In this experiment, every time the subject (learner) answered incorrectly, the recruited male (teacher) would have to shock them. The results were: all forty subjects (teachers) obeyed up to 300 volts, and twenty-five of the so-called teachers, continued to give shocks up to the maximum level of 450 volts.
Stanley Milgram: 'electric shock' experiments (1963) - also showed the power of the situation in influencing behaviour. 65% of people could be easily induced into giving a stranger an electric shock of 450V (enough to kill someone). 100% of people could be influenced into giving a 275V shock.
As a result, 65% of participants, the “teachers,” continued to the 450-volt level. All the participants continued to at least 300 volts. Milgram conducted more than one experiment. He carried out 18 variations of this study, altering the situation to see how this affected obedience.
Only a third as many people were obedient through 450 volts when the experiment was altered to where the experimenter gave his instructions by telephone instead of in person. The experimenter’s authority was not strong and the experiment was not of high importance, yet the subjects still obeyed. They were not threatened with punishment, but with the failure of obeying. When the subject’s only task was to read the questions, they later blamed the execution on the person
The Milgram’s Experiment was an experiment to see how authority figures effects the way people obey conducted by Social psychology by the name Stanley Milgram this experiment was conducted in 1969. Milgram hired about 500 men between the ages of 20 and 50 from a newspaper ad he had placed. Milgram was looking for men that came from all walks in life. Milgram did not care if they were educated, uneducated, rich or poor he wanted them all. The men that were chosen to participate in the experiment were told that they would be paid 4.50 for one hour of their time if they participated in the experiment.
Diana Baumrind and Ian Parker have each authored a review of Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience experiments. In Milgram’s experiments, he observed the extent of subjects ' obedience to authority when an experimenter commanded them to deliver possibly harmful electric shocks to another person. According to Milgram, an alarming amount of subjects willingly proceeded to the highest voltage shock in the experiment. In Baumrind 's "Review of Stanley Milgram 's Experiments on Obedience," she attempts to disprove and refute Milgram 's experiments by criticizing his experimental set-up, his lack of safety precautions, his ethically questionable study, and his comparison between his experiments and Nazi Germany. In Parker’s “Obedience,” he seeks to show Milgram 's strengths and weaknesses in order to review his experiments. Parker begins his critique by analyzing Milgram 's ethics and questionable scientific procedure. He then evaluates Milgram 's comparison between his experiment and the Holocaust, summarizes Milgram 's life and the effect it had on his experiments, and introduces the effect of situational factors on obedience. While Parker effectively critiques Milgram’s experiments by discussing Milgram’s ethical flaws and the flaws in his procedure, Baumrind ineffectively and subjectively analyzes these topics; however, both authors effectively critique Milgram’s comparison between his experiments and the Holocaust.