Milgram Experiment Analysis
In the 1960’s psychologist Stanley Milgram set up what could be deemed as a controversial set of experiments. His goal was to see if he could determine how ordinary German citizens could have been a part of such atrocities committed against the Jewish people in World War II. Milgram also wondered if something like that could still take place in our modern society. The true motives of the experiment were not revealed to the participants until after the experiment was concluded (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry, 2014). The participants were recruited from the general-public. They were told the experiment was to determine how punishment influences learning and that they would be paid four dollars for participating in the experiment.
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In western societies, we tend to look at someone in a lab coat as smarter and more in charge when it comes to situations of medicine and science. I think most people, myself included, would fall prey to the misconception that a person in a lab coat is smarter and more in charge in a situation. I even feel in this current climate of questioning authority that most people would exhibit the same level of obedience in the experiment as most the subjects have done in the past. The reason I feel this way is I don’t feel humans have undergone any sense of enlightenment or change in their basic behaviors since the 1960’s when the Milgram experiment was first conducted. I think we see this blind obedience to authority in sports and in business every day. Athletes look to their coaches for guidance and direction. An athlete would see a coach as a person with authority. And when it comes to business individuals that are pursuing a career in any field would be complying with orders from a supervisor that they may disagree with (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry, …show more content…
The estimates before Milgram’s experiment were in 2-3% of the subjects would be compliant, even to the point of administering a 450-volt shock to another person. The actual findings of the Milgram experiment being at 65% compliance came as a bit of a shock to everyone involved and to the rest of society. This demonstrates how for the most part, people think of themselves as autonomous, free thinking beings and view others in the same light. But due to the person-situation interaction, for the most part people will let the social influence of a given situation override their beliefs and characteristics (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry,
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.
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’s argument in his experiment which took place in 1963 stated that people listen to anybody who has some authority, in this case a lab coat. Milgram argues that people have blind obedience to those who say they are doing something that that is “morally right and/or legally based.” What is terrifying is that other psychiatrists and psychologists
The Milgram Experiment conducted at Yale University in 1963, focused on whether a person would follow instructions from someone showing authority. Students (actors) were asked questions by the teachers (participants), if the students got the answer wrong they would receive a shock each higher than the previous. The shocks ranged from Slight shock (15v) to Danger! (300v) to XXX (450v). Stanley Milgram wanted to know if people would do things just because someone with authority told them to, even if it was hurting someone. I believe that the experiment was a good way to test the obedience of people
Milgram proved his belief be a series of 20 experiments with 1000 participants. He studied how people would respond to outright commands given by someone of authority to give punishment on a learning. So, if the learner gives the wrong answer the teacher(participant) would admit a bolt of electric shock delivered by a switch. Would the participants be obedient to the social constraints of authority or disobey the authority(experimenter), hence, delivering a bolt of shock or not delivering a bolt of shock? Also, at what level will the participant disobey and refuse to give punishment to the learner? Personally, I feel my best choice if I was a participant in the study is the choice from the beginning of the experiment to not continue to participate. Still, I think it is very possible to get wrapped up in wanting to please the authorities persuasion and submit to their direction, then, the outcome is giving punishment to the learner long after my moral sense tells me to stop. Ultimately, if the study was conducted today many people believe our culture in America has not changed enough to get a different outcome in a study like Milgram’s
Each of the two experiments carried out by Milgram and Zimbardo had questionable ethics in their procedure. Ethics is defined as “Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). In psychology, ethics are moral guidelines when conducting social experiments such as these, so that the dignity of each participant is respected and preserved. This piece of work will evaluate the perceived ethics in Milgram’s experiment of human obedience to authority figures, and Zimbardo’s experiment of conformity to roles, and also provide an overall conclusion on whether or not these studies were ethical.
The Milgram Obedience Study was an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to observe how far people would obey instructions that resulted in harming another individual. The experiment consisted of a “learner” engaging in a memory task and a “teacher” testing the “learner” on the task, administering electrical shocks to the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was given; the electric shocks started out small from 15 volts, labeled as “SLIGHT SHOCK”, all the way to 450 volts, labeled as “X X X”—of course, that was what the participant was told. The true purpose of the experiment was not disclosed until after the experiment and the “random selection” of who would be the “teacher” or “learner” was rigged so that the participant was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was always an actor. The shocks, naturally, were never given to the “learner”, and the “learner” gave responses that were scripted, both in answers to the questions and in responses to the shocks.
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
In 1974 Stanley Milgram conducted the classic study of obedience to authority. The study looked into how far individuals would be willing to go, and were asked could they deliver increasingly devastating electric shocks to a fellow human being, as they were requested to do so by the professor in charge of the experiment.
In this experiment, subjects are explained that this is “a ‘learning experiment’ to ... study the effects of punishment on memory” (4). Yet, the real intention here is to measure the participants’ compliance towards the experimenter. This controversy is unethical as subjects are volunteering for a cause that does not exist. They are misled since they are not exposed to the real purpose of this study.
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.”
Milgram’s Yale University study consists of an experimenter giving directions to participants to administer shocks to a test subject doing a memory task. Milgram’s purpose of this study was to observe whether participants’ would be inclined to go along with the experimenter’s instructions and if all of those who were instructed to give these shocks would follow through with commands. The findings showed that 65% of participants were inclined to give such shocks because they may have feel obliged to follow these orders by the influence of the power of authority (even if it may cause harm to the test subject and caused the participant discomfort). Milgram states the relevance of the environment (situation) of the experiment and group dynamics (group peer
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.
Every day, every hour, every second decisions are being made by individuals. Stanley Milgram a psychologist who experimented in 1963 tested for human’s compliance to authority figures. “The power of Milgram’s experiments lies, perhaps, right here, in the great gap between what we think about ourselves, and who we frankly are”(Slater 39). Today, individuals initial response to Milgram’s experiment denied they would comply to an authority figure asking them to do something so unethical. However, just in 1963 Milgram found that 65 per cent of the experimenter were willing to compromise their ethical beliefs and gave the highest voltage shock possible to a learner. Whether it's small like the Milgram experiment or big like a genocide,
The Milgram experiment is probably one of the most well-known experiments of the psy-sciences. (De Vos, J. (2009). Stanley Milgram was a psychologist from Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected people for his experiment by newspaper advertising. He looked for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.