Milgram’s Study of Obedience to Authority

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

In 1963 a psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted one of the greatest controversial experiments of all time. Milgram tested students from Yale to discover the obedience of people to an authoritative figure. The subjects, whom did not know the shocks would not hurt, had to shock a “learner” when the “learner” answered questions incorrectly. Milgram came under fire for this experiment, which many proclaimed was unethical. This experiment of Milgram’s stimulated the creation of several responsive articles. Two articles that respond to this experiment are authored by Diane Baumrind and Ian Parker. These two authors attempt to review the methods, results, and ethical issues of Milgram’s experiment.

Stanley Milgram’s (1963) study of behavioral obedience sought to understand the nature that drives humans to submit to destructive obedience. In his study, Milgram deceived his subject volunteers into believing that the experiment they were submitting themselves to involved learning about the effects of punishment on learning. Under this pretext, a subject “teacher” was to administer electric shocks to a confederate “learner” for every wrong answer in a word-pairing exercise. The subject was to administer shocks in increments, even when the learner protested. The experimenter’s role was to pressure the subjects to continue when they wanted to stop (Milgram, 1963). In doing so, Milgram sought to gauge what it is that influences his subjects

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

Stanley Milgram is a famous psychologist who focused his studies on authority and peoples reaction and obedience to it. His famous experiment and it's results were groundbreaking in psychology, surprising both psychologists and regular people alike. First I will discuss the reason for Milgrims study of obedience to authority. Then I will explain the experiment, its formulation, and its results. Finally I will cover the influence of the experiment on psychology and society.

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 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 1963 Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, created an experiment examining obedience. This experiment has been questioned by many psychology professionals. One psychologist Diana Baumrind transcribes her beliefs in the “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Baumrind, when writing the review, was employed at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. In her review Baumrind denounces Milgram for his treatment of his subjects, potentially harming their self image. However, Ian Parker, a British journalist who has written for the New Yorker and Human Sciences, believes Milgram’s findings still hold a significant place in society today. In his article “Obedience” Parker focuses on the purpose of

Stanley Milgram, established a new course of study in the psychology of obedience. The purpose of his experiment was to have an idea of to see how people react the autocritical standard; during his experiment, he recorded how people will behave when given a source of power. Milgram gained this idea after the World War II. He believed that some people had the ability to essentially block out human thoughts of morals, ethics, and sympathetics when assigned to a job. The core issue that Milgram faced was finding a way to create a situation to test his theory; because behavior is such a complicated aspect of psychology to test, Milgram had to properly execute the experiment without physical harm from one person to another.

In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, published the findings of his infamous human authority experiment. During this trial, human subjects were tested to discern how far one will go in order to obey the commands of an authority figure. The test subjects were fooled into believing someone was actually being shocked; however, the reality was the other person was simply an actor and never received any shocks. The results were astounding: sixty-five percent of the subjects continued the entire 450 volts, while the rest lasted until at least 300 volts. In response to the experiment, Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkley, examined the actions and moral issues executed by

Multiple arguments are made about Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments. Diana Baumrind, author of “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience” and a former psychologist at the University of California in Berkeley, strongly believes that Milgram’s experiments should not have taken place. Baumrind focuses on the aftermath of the experiment and how even when subjects were told that the screams they heard were merely recordings, participants experienced lasting effects (Baumrind 90). Ian Parker, author of “Obedience” and a writer for the New Yorker, also believes the trauma experienced by participants was unethical; some participants suffered from heart attacks after the experiment, and others were in therapy several years later when Milgram conducted a survey (Parker 98).

In “The Stanford Prison Experiment” Philip G. Zimbardo discusses an experiment he conducted, which consisted of college students portraying guards and prisoners in a simulated prison. Shortly after the experiment began, it was stopped, due to the mistreatment of the prisoners and the overall psychological abuse inflicted on them by the prison guards (Zimbardo 116). In “The Perils of Obedience” Stanley Milgram writes about a controversial experiment in which he requests volunteers to assist him in shocking participants who answer incorrectly to certain questions on the opposite side of a wall. The shock that the volunteers believe they are administering could cause great harm or even be deadly to the participants. After Milgram conducts

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

Despite the reason, any man who compromised his ethical values to commit an atrocity against other human being, should be held responsible for his actions. One can say this, considering that a mature adults should know that one should obey authority, unless the actions, which are being prescribed by an authority will harm someone, For instance, when we accept a job position, e are selling our workforce not our volition and dignity. Therefore, no matter how high or important the authority figure is, a person should not harm others on behalf of being obedient and faithful to someone.

In the early 1960’s Stanley Milgram (1963) performed an experiment titled Behavioral Study of Obedience to measure compliance levels of test subjects prompted to administer punishment to learners. The experiment had surprising results.