Obedience, By Stanley Milgram Tore

Obedience to people in authority is a deep-rooted trait that we all possess by virtue of our upbringing, and as Milgram put it, “it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others” (Milgram 1974). This trait is exhibited every day in family circles, workplace and school. People are most likely to obey instructions from people they perceive their authority to be legal or moral. We see people obeying their pastors, leaders in various societies and other people they see as higher to them; and they obey anything they are being told even if it involves killing another human being. They justify their actions, however wrong, on obedience to authority.

The Milgram Experiment on Obedience to Authority Figures Stanley Milgram’s experiment on obedience is one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology. Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority figures focuses on the morally ambiguous line between obedience to authority and personal conscience. The Milgram Experiment is involved in many different aspects of history and what it means to be human, which this paper will attempt to describe.

“The Perils of Obedience” was written by Stanley Milgram in 1974. In the essay he describes his experiments on obedience to authority. I feel as though this is a great psychology essay and will be used in psychology 101 classes for generations to come. The essay describes how people are willing to do almost anything that they are told no matter how immoral the action is or how much pain it may cause.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

Society is based upon those who lead and those who follow. Typically people will go as far as harming innocent people in order to please authority. Events such as mass genocides and massacres, happen due to people’s strong willingness follow authority they will perpetrate these horrendous acts. From the outside perspective, it seems as though these events should be obviously avoidable. However, it is difficult to imagine being in the position of either going against personal morals or following authority. Milgram decided to test the theory of how far a person will go to satisfy authority. Although society is skeptical to accept the validity of Milgram’s results, the event that occurred in My Lai proves his results.

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

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

Psychologists take the effort to contrast the influences of people in regard to thinking, awareness, feelings, actions, attitudes, and behavior. Society tends to form responses from how one person’s actions ultimately causes various stereotypes and prejudices to be generated. Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram, discusses various subjects such as impression, stereotypes and prejudices, attribution, attitudes, social influence, attraction, obedience and authority, groups, and helping behavior. Milgram explains, “A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of over-all direction. He yields to authority but in doing so are alienated from his own actions.” (Milgram 11). In this passage, the author shows how in a workplace, people are given small and narrow jobs which is arguably taking away human qualities. Due to the fact that, workers cannot see the full overview of the job that is being done and can only see the specific job that was designated, forces the workers to comply with authority, with the concept in mind that the workers are inferior. This works in many cases, if someone is told a small portion of a project is designated to them, instead of the full project; the worker will feel more inferior to the superior workers, which is an astute way to run an operation. Milgram also discusses, “Within the experimental setting, we find the three elements: position, status and action. Position

Draft thesis statement: Through numerous examples as illustrated in Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience”, along with the “Replicating Milgrim” experiment by Burger, individuals that have comprised an entirely different set of moral in order to obey, should not be excused for all accountability, even when responsibility is presumably accepted by someone with authority, as there is a lack of correlation between the impact of self awareness in morality to the pressure for obedience.

In Stanley Milgram’s essay, “Perils of Disobedience”, an experiment was conducted to test an individual’s obedience from authority when conflicting with morally incorrect orders. Following the conclusion of World War Two, Milgram’s essay was published in Harper’s Magazine, which appeals to a national audience and yields an array of content from different contextual backgrounds. As Milgram reports the results of his experiment, he provides descriptive details of many of the subjects and their behaviors when conflicted with following orders that hurt another individual. Among other rhetorical elements in his essay, Milgram utilizes the format of his writing in order to fully convey his evidence in a compelling manner to the reader. Milgram’s

The amount of cruelty one possess varies individually depending on the situations an individual has experienced throughout their life. This is why Milgram received such shocking results in his obedience experiment and why only a few reacted in Darley and Latane 's studies. Although cruelty is within from birth, the test subjects in Milgram 's, Darley and Latane 's experiment had no intentions of being cruel because they believed they were simply following orders and still fighting a personal conflict which is to respond or not to a situation, while still conforming to the norms of social etiquette.

Obedience and Disobedience has been a part of key moments in history. Many have studied forms of obedience to learn how it affects people and situations. For example, Stanley Milgram conducted a well-known experiment in which the subject, named the “teacher” must shock the “learner” every time he doesn’t remember a word pair from a memory test. The focus of this study is on the teacher, and whether they will administer killing shocks when told to by an authority figure. Another well-known experiment is the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. A group of college boys were separated into two groups, prison guards and prisoners, and were put

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

Retrieved April 25, 2018, from https://nature.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm Conducting the Milgram Experiment in Poland, Psychologists Show People Still Obey. (2017, March 15). Retrieved April 25, 2018, from http://www.spsp.org/news-center/press-releases/milgram-poland-obey McCartney, S., & Parent, R. (n.d.). 4.3 The Milgram Experiment.

Growing up as the youngest child of three, my parents always gave me much leeway. They never really disciplined me in ways my friend’s parents have disciplined my friend. They taught me right from wrong through a reward system. If I obeyed, they rewarded me in the form of toys. If I disobeyed, they scolded me. After many cycles of repetition, many children, including myself, realize that we are expected to be obedient in society. Not only is it a learned trait, but it also an inherent trait in certain circumstances. As I grew up, I learned that obedience helps us fit into society. Obedience convinces people to feel as if they are a part of an institution larger than themselves. This larger institution protects them from harm. Even though obedience has been helpful in numerous situations for many people, too much obedience has more drawbacks than benefits. An abundance of obedience can lend itself to becoming blind obedience, thus, stopping humans from thinking for themselves and just blindly obeying any order. Historically, blind obedience has been the root of numerous atrocities and serves as a reminder that obedience can lead to humanity’s downfall. Themes of obedience are studied in many articles and experiments. Two prominent examples, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, and Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst, both wrote about their beliefs as to why humans are so prone to obey. The nature of human obedience derives its potency from consistent habituating, protection, and