Obey At Any Cost?

The Milgram Obedience Study performed by Stanley Milgram proved that people are willing to following instructions given by figures of authority even though the instruction could result in the infliction of pain to others and goes against their personal values. The study had three participants. The first person is the person running the study known as the authority person. The second person is a pretend volunteer who is aware of the course of the study. The third person, who is the only person not aware of the situation, would draw a paper that was fixed to make them be the volunteer of the study. In that role, they would receive

Milgram investigated how far people would be prepared to go when obeying an authority figure. Forty men aged from 20 to 50 volunteered to take part. When the participant arrived they were greeted by the experimenter who was wearing a lab coat. The

Stanley Milgram writes about his shocking experiment in “Perils of Obedience.” Milgram writes on the behaviors that the people had during the experiment. Milgram had an experiment that involves two people. One person was a student and the other a teacher. The student was strapped into an electric chair and was required to answer certain questions. The teacher asked a certain word, and the student must know the pair that goes with it. If the student answered the question incorrectly, the teacher must shock the student. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the volts increase. Milgram was expecting the teachers to back out of the experiment once they saw the student in pain for the first time, but surprisingly enough, more than sixty percent of the teachers obeyed the experimenter and continued on with the experiment, reaching up to four-hundred-fifty volts. After three times of the four-hundred-fifty volt shock, the experiment was called to halt.

To test his theory, Milgram required forty participants in total who had to be twenty to fifty years of age with various backgrounds. All of the participants that came to the study were paid beforehand so that the experiment would not have any flaws by their actions towards getting their money. After receiving the money, it will be theirs to keep with the option

The next experiment focuses on obedience and why the tests subjects reacted the way they did. Stanley Milgram reflects on the study conducted and the outcomes of the electric shock study in an article titled “The Perils of Obedience”. The experiment calls for a teacher participant to do word association with a learner. When an incorrect answer is given by the learner, the teacher is under the instruction to administer electric shock on an upwards scale as the experiment continues. There comes a point in the experiment when the teachers feel uncomfortable continuing to shock the learner. Many times though the teacher continues at the urging of an individual overseeing the experiment. The first experiment that Milgram conducted was using Yale undergraduates, the results reflected “about 60 percent of them being fully obedient (696).” Another experiment was then conducted using “ordinary people” as the people of New Haven were labeled (Milgram 696). Milgram made the following statement about the results: “The experiment’s total outcome was the same as we had observed among the students (696).” The study did reflect that even though a person did not agree with the commands especially when putting another individual through he or she did as told more than half of the time. More studies were conducted around the world by other professors; many of the experiments had the same or similar results. There is one study that was conducted that has

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment on a group’s obedience to authority. This experiment has encountered intense scrutiny ever since its findings were first published in 1963; many people question the ethics and validity of the experiment. Multitudes of researchers have taken it upon themselves to determine the answers to the questions (McLeod). Based on new guidelines for ethics, Stanley Milgram’s experiment on the obedience to authority was neither ethical nor valid.

The last two switches on the board were simply characterized as XXX. Before the experiment begins, the teacher is subjected to a test shock of 45 volts to understand to an extent what the learner will be enduring. The experimenter assures both participants that though the shocks may be extremely painful, they are not dangerous. The teacher is instructed by the experimenter to begin at 15 volts and increase the intensity of the shocks after every incorrect answer. The actor was trained to exhibit various indicators of distress based on the voltage level at which they were being “shocked”. These distress signals included groaning, screaming, refusal to continue, indication of a heart problem, and lastly silence. Milgram was able to watch the experiment out-of-sight from another room. Though he had few expectations in terms of what to expect from the teachers, he wasn’t sure that anyone would administer 450 volts. What Milgram found was that the majority (approximately 65% of the subjects) went as far as to administer the maximum 450 volts. Even after expressing perceptible anxiety and a reluctance to continue, none of the subjects terminated prior to administering the 300-volt shocks. When individuals began to exhibit hesitation, the experimenter was to insist that the teacher continue, as it was of the utmost importance that they reach the end of the experiment. Out of the 40 individuals who took part, 26 of them completed

the main objective of the experiment was not only to see how obedient a person would be on killing someone else, but also to see if they took responsibility for killing a person or blaming it on the instructor, the person giving them the commands. For this experiment they needed 40 males at the ages of 20 and 50. Then they would be pared up with a partner. They would be given sticks to determine who would be the teacher and who would be the learner. This part of the experiment was always rigged, meaning that the learner was always one of Milgram’s lab assistants, and the teacher was always the participant (volunteer). After they found out who was who they would take the learner in one room, then proceed to strap the learner to a chair with

When individuals abandon their own freedom for the benefit of the larger group, they are no longer individuals but products of conformity. Obedience to authority can become dangerous when morals and independent thought are stifled to the point that harm is inflicted upon another person. "The Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram reports on his controversial experiment that test how far individuals would go in obeying orders, even if carrying out those orders caused serious harm to others. This experiment caused a lot of controversy and one woman in particular believed that this experiment was immoral. Diana Baumrind's "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience" says that Milgram

Stanley Milgram (1963), who was a psychologist at Yale University carried out a study to establish whether ordinary people are likely to be obedient to their authority. He concentrated on the compliance between a person's moral sense and authority. The subject of his experiment were people who were held responsible for Germany war crimes claimed in their defence they stated that they acted on the orders by the authorities.

In Stanley Milgram 's essay Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority, the self-proclaimed "social psychologist" conducted a study while working as a psychologist at Yale University. The primary goal of Milgram 's experiment was to measure the desire of the participants to shock a learner in a controlled situation. The experiment was based on three primary roles: the authoritative figure, the learner, and the teachers. The authoritative figure instructed the teachers to shock the learner when they answered the question wrong. This form of punishment is typically believed to conflict with personal morals and the main reason for the experiment was to evaluate the teacher 's response to

Milgram wanted to determine how far people would be willing to go to obey authority. The subjects arrived at Yale University and were met by an experimenter in a lab coat that informed them that they would be participating in a study on the effects of

Stanley Milgram wanted to test subject’s readiness to obey authority without question, no matter what inhumane acts the authority commands. The subjects in the study were gathered by a newspaper advertisement that requested volunteers for an experiment to study the effect of punishment on learning, if chosen they would be compensated $4.50 for their participation. Forty males between the ages of 25 and 50 were selected with varying occupations and education levels. The experiment was conducted in the interaction laboratory at Yale University. The role of the experimenter was played by a 31 year old high school biology teacher who wore a gray technician’s coat and was aware of the true objective of the study. One naïve subject and one victim, an accomplice, performed in each experiment. The cover story, the effect of punishment on learning, was used to justify the administration of electric shock by the naïve subject. The naïve subjects were told that the experiment was going to test the effect different people have on each other as teachers and learners, and what effect punishment will have on learning in the controlled situation. The experimenter had the participants draw slips out of a hat to decide if they were going to be designated as a teacher or as a learner. This drawing was engineered so that a naïve subject was always the teacher and an accomplice was always the learner. Immediately after the drawing, the teacher and

Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professionals. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up. At the beginning of the experiment participants were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experiment. Tiny pieces of paper were drawn to determine the roles. For example, the learner or the teacher. Milgram did this to make the allusion to the participants this was a true experiment, while the experiment would be fixed as the confederate would always be the learner. Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner, with an electric chair and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator. The “learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner from a list of four possible choices. The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts as the slightest shock to 450 being

The research methods used in the study conducted by Dr. Milgram were experiment and observation. The subjects of the study were recruiting using a newspaper advertisement and direct mail solicitation. The participants believed they were going to take part in a study of memory and learning at Yale University. There were a total of 40 male participants between the age of 20 and 50. The participants would act as teachers under direction of an experimenter and would be instructed to deliver shocks to their students if they answered a question wrong. The shocks were delivered from a machine that ranged from 15 volts to 450 volts. The experimenter was dressed in a technician coat