Milgram Obedience Research Paper

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment has definitely set the basis to explain the pain inflicted by a human being on another human only if she is ordered to. He asserted that a normal human being can become an element of destructive agents of even when the destructive effects of their work becomes patently clear as they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with basic moral standards.

The experimenter had four scripted prods for his participants. The first was “Please go on”, the second “This experiment requires you to go on”, the third being “It’s absolutely essential to go on”, and the fourth and most important one “You have no other choice, you must continue” (Milgram 1961). The fourth prod that would be given to the participant was definitely an order. Many of the participants who were given this order and were told had no choice would immediately back out and stop. The subjects are willing to shock another person but as soon as it was said that it was a “must” and an “order” the subjects did not

innocent individual because an authority figure was telling them to. There were specific instances when a subject said he wanted to stop because he was worried about the health of the person he was delivering the shocks to but he continued when the researcher told him that he would accept all responsibility. This detail reveals allot about people's obedience to authority. It showed that when a person hears

The complexities of a human’s willingness to submit to another person’s will have intrigued mankind since the formation of societal groups. Only in recent history has there been any studies conducted which so completely capture the layman’s imagination as the obedience experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram. As one of the few psychological experiments to have such an attention grabbing significance, Milgram discovered a hidden trait of the human psyche that seemed to show a hidden psychotic in even the most demure person. Milgram presents his startling findings in “The Perils of Obedience”. Publication created a great deal of discussion, with one of the more vocal critics being Diana Baumrind, who details her points of contention in the

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

“Don’t eat that, Steve!” yells a worried mother from across the park. Her son, Steve, about to put a chunk of dirt into his mouth looks up at her, confused. “That’s dirt, son, we don’t eat that”, says his mother in a gentle and reassuring voice. Promptly, the boy obeys her, leaving the dirt on the ground and running to her arms. Babies like Steve know that, because their mom says so, they should or shouldn’t do certain things. This early form of obedience is present in human beings from a very early age. This is represented in babies obeying simple commands or prohibitions from their mother (Stayton, Hogan, & Mary D. 1971). This was found to be connected to the mother’s responses to the baby’s actions, such as her tone and her

He makes an important hypothesis that universal grammar (UG). UG is a characterization of these innate principle of language faculty, I-language. (5) He then postulates some detailed structure of UG. It is a system of conditions on grammars, constraints on the form and interpretation of grammar at all levels, from the deep structures of syntax, through the transformational component, to the rules that interpret syntactic structures semantically and phonetically. The study of linguistic universals, which is classified as formal or substantive, is the study of the properties of UG for a natural language. (6) Substantive universals concern the vocabulary for the description of language and a formal linguistic universal involve the character of the rules that appear in grammars and the ways in which they can be interconnected. Language-acquisition device uses primary linguistic data as the empirical basis for language learning to meet explanatory adequacy that is defined in UG, and to select one of the potential grammars, which is permitted by UG.

The debate between many researchers is the argument of whether nature or nurture play a more important role in development. In this essay I will be looking into both aspects of nature and nurture focusing specifically on their influence towards language development in children. A main controversial question I will be looking into is the question of whether are we born already equipped with mechanisms which help us to learn language, or is language learned throughout a child’s environment by, for example, imitation and repetition? Studies done by some opposing researchers claim to show that nature and nurture promote language development

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

According to his theory, every human being is biologically endowed with a language faculty, which is responsible for the initial state of language development. This inborn ability is called the Language acquisition device (LAD). The language acquisition device is a hypothetical area of the brain that explains how children can learn languages

There are several theories regarding language development. Work by Chomsky, Piaget and Kuhl are critical. Studies by Chomsky, as examined by Albery, Chandler, Field, Jones, Messer, Moore and Sterling (2009); Deloache, Eisenberg & Siegler (2003) argued for the innateness of language acquisition due to its complexity. Development is assisted by a language acquisition device (LAD) and universal grammar both of which holding the propensity for commonalities throughout all languages. LAD is the key to the Syntax rule. The knowledge to master the rules is held unconsciously. Chomsky concludes exposure through auditory channels as being the only requirement for learning. Arguably Kuhl (2010) writes infantile exposure to language through auditory channels only, does not contribute effectively to learning indicating the importance of human interaction. Piaget, as discussed by Ault (1977) postulated language as not being part of the earliest stages of development. Signifying within sensorimotor stage, between birth and two years, the child’s development is too reflexive. Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg (2004) discuss the critical period hypothesis and suggest the young brain being more suited to acquisition than the adult brain. Lenneberg (1967) (as cited in Gleitman et al 2004) advocates, brain maturation closes language acquisition capacity window. Kuhl (2010) identified, within the critical period babies develop

I have chosen Ewa Dabrowska’s 2015 journal article, ‘What exactly is Universal Grammar and has anyone seen it? I am using this area of study within Language and Communication to argue how children acquire language. In the article, Dabrowska argues that there is little agreement on what Universal Grammar (UG) actually is and what it contains. She states that there is only agreement that proponents of UG exist, leading her to look for specific existence for linguistic innate knowledge. Dabrowska further argues that arguments for UG are either irrelevant, false or unsupported by evidence. Dabrowska’s looks at number of arguments for UG; in particular - ‘universality’, ‘convergence’ and ‘poverty of the stimulus’ – which she believes to be the most

When discussing about “In other words”, Bialystok and Hakuta state that there is some thought that children who may appear to be learning a second languge very quickly at a vey young age (before the age of 5). They further state that accompanied by the loss of their first language, have really replaced the first language with the second language.