Milgram's Obedience Study Summary

This essay will look at an important key psychological experiment carried out by the renowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram which was carried out in the early 1960’s (Banyard 2012) to determine how far ordinary people would go to inflict pain to a fellow human based on instruction from an authority figure, and that of the replication of the experiment which was carried out by Burger in 2009 (Byford 2014) to determine if the same level of obedience was still applicable in the 21st Century, as was observed in the original study some 40 years earlier. The

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

However, when they conducted their experiments they did not breach any ethical guidelines since they did not exist (Matta, 2014). Hence, to protect the welfare, rights, dignity, and mental health of the participants, strict ethical guidelines were introduced in psychological experiments which have positively influenced the field of psychology. Also, due to ethical frameworks, people are viewed as ‘participants’ of a study instead of ‘subjects’ in an experiment. They also make psychological experiments more reputable, leading to an increase in the willingness of participation by people as their safety is ensured. The increased willingness of participation is beneficial in order to discover more about human behaviour, the effectiveness of treatment, mechanisms of a psychiatric disorder etc.

Ethical dilemmas are one of the many sensitive issues that come with doing psychological research with human participants. As seen in several famous psychology studies such as the Stanford prison experiment, Milgram experiment, and Tuskegee experiment, ethics in psychological studies are important to protect both the individuals being subjected to research and the researcher. While these specific experiments did not include children, it does bring up an important conversation regarding ethics in research. There are several guidelines put in place by the American Psychological Association to protect humans during research. However, special considerations and guidelines are put into place when working with

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 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.

In her article, “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”, psychologist Diana Baumrind criticizes Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority, stating that not only were Milgram’s experiments unethical but so was the scientist himself, claiming that he did not take appropriate measures to properly ensure his subject’s wellbeing post-experiment and therefore, experiments such as these should not be repeated. Baumrind does address an important point in her review and that is the responsibility of psychologists to ensure that their subjects are treated fairly and ethically but this is overshadowed by the fact that Baumrind’s argument is one rooted in pathos with little evidence to support her claims while being

* The IV was the presence of the authority figure and the DV was the

In the 1960 's, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor, conducted an experiment that sparked intense controversy throughout the nation. Milgram attempted to pinpoint evil in its rawest form: this was achieved by placing an ordinary person, called the "teacher", in a situation in which an instructor pressured the subject to shock another person, called the learner. Despite hearing the progressively agonizing screams of the learner, the teacher continued to comply with the directives given by the instructor, thereby selecting obedience over morality. While this experiment was revered and praised by many scientists and psychologists, it was also ridiculed by others. One psychologist that holds the Milgram experiment in extreme contempt is Diana Baumrind, a leading parenting phycologist. She expressed in her article, Review of Stanley Milgram 's Experiments on Obedience, that the experiment was administered by a detached and calculating man whom of which took pleasure in emotionally damaging his subjects. She provides the reader with an emotional perspective in regards to the Milgram experiments. Additionally, critical psychologist Ian Parker describes in his article, Obedience, not only the inhumanity of the experiment, but also the lack of scientific evidence that Milgram uses to support his experiment; in addition, Parker cites multiple sources that support his claims against this incredible experiment. His critique also analytically depicts the repercussions Milgram faced

In the video , Psychologist Milgram experimented on human behavior and their obedience to authority. Showing examples of regular, everyday civilians,volunteering to take an experiment on whether they would get questions right or wrong. With this type of experiment comes consequences where they would be shocked by a "shock generator" which elevates in voltage the more answers that are answered wrong,the higher the voltage goes. In the experiment Milgram wanted to prove that humans will suffer pain behind their belief of the level of authority that an individual upholds. Knowing each question that they may answer could possibly become wrong,the consciously continue in the state of conflict of whether they should proceed on with the experiment or stop. Also, not only does the volunteers continue to take on the abuse of this experiment but their was some Psychologist that continued with the experiment,even when it became dangerous. One man in the video expressed that he has a heart condition,yet and stillcontinued to go on with the experiment and the Psycholist agreed,without any hesitations for health of this older male gentleman.

The study was conducted by Stanley Milgram and aimed to examine how people “reacted to instructions from authorized individuals when the actions conflicted with their personal safety and conscience” (De Vos, 2009, p.226). The participants were instructed to work in pairs and play different roles. In each pair, one of the participants played a role of a “learner,” and was presented with different questions from the “teacher,” the second person in the pair. Experimenters observed the questioning process and asked “teachers” to apply an electric shock to “learners” when they gave wrong answers to questions. The main problem in the research was ethical, as the more than a half of “teachers” were instructed to apply electric shocks up to the level of 450 volts, which could be very harmful. However, the “learners” were asked to provide mainly wrong questions, and the “teachers” were not aware of this intention (Milgram, 2010). At the end of the study, the experimenters revealed the deception. The research concluded that “teachers” were likely to obey instructions from authorized individuals, even when the health of “learners” supposedly was in serious

Title: Drawing on Milgram's classic laboratory research on obedience Examine and Asses the relevance of laboratory based research to real life. Please consider the suggestion below.

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

Why people change their behaviors? One of the theories that can explain change in behavior is social influence theory. According to this theory, how and what we do, think, and feel are affected by social groups such as other persons’ pressures which can be an intention or not. There are three major components which have great influences on changing our behaviors, thoughts or feelings: conformity, compliance, and obedience. According to our text, Social Psychology Goals in Interaction, (Kenrick, Neuberg & Cialdini, 2010), “conformity is behavior change designed to match the actions of others, compliance is behavior change that occurs as a result of a direct request, and obedience is compliance that occurs in response to a directive from an

“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....”