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Milgram Study Paper Analyzed And Discussed. The Milgram

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Milgram Study Paper; Analyzed and Discussed The Milgram experiment took place in an underground room in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, situated on the campus of Yale University, in July 1961. Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram led the experiment. The experiment was met to measure the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform an experiment that was against their moral views. Milgram’s participants for his experiments were from all backgrounds. The subjects ranged from college graduates to people that had not finished grade school (Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority). They were told the experiment would study the effects of punishment on a person’s learning ability, and were …show more content…

Milgram was shocked by the levels of obedience and set about devising variations of the experiment to find out what components of the situation led to such levels of total obedience. He increased the learner’s proximity first with vocal feedback from the shocks, progressing from grunts to refusals to continued and agonizing screams, then the learner was placed in the same room acting as if being shocked, and then finally the teacher sat next to the learner and had to forcefully hold the learners hand down onto a shock plate while administering shocks. The learner refuses to continue after 150 volts. These variations each completed 40 times show the level of detail Milgram went to with his study. He dissected every aspect of the situation and studied its effect on the outcome. The variations showed that proximity to the learner increased disobedience to the orders to continue hurting the learner. Staggeringly 30% of participants completed the experiment even when they had to hold down the unwilling learners hand. What makes Milgram’s studies important is the detailed replication and careful alteration of the experiments parameters. The results demonstrate clear and largely consistent statistical data. The substantial number of participants enables us to look past dispositional factors, personal factors participants brought to the experiment, and see the patterns of behavior inherent in modern society at

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