Summary and Analysis of "Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram
Summary
The "Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram details about the classic studies relating to obedience. The main study in focus is the Milgram’s Obedience study, conducted in the 1963 by the Yale University scientist Stanley Milgram. The experiment was designed by Milgram in such a way that participants are forced to obey the instructions of authority figure, even if they are immoral and also when such instructions cause pain/harm to another person. The participants selected for the experiment are ordinary people (Milgram, 630). The participants were willing to administer electric shocks to remaining people when ordered by authority figure. The Milgram experiment does not address the ethical concerns of testing and Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University, upon modifying the Milgram's setup found that situational factors result increased obedience in participants (Milgram, 631). The studies conducted by Burger and Milgram showed under a specific set of circumstances, the
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People are ready to give electric shocks to others when given orders by authority figures and only few of them opposed such shocks. The participants in the experiments conducted by Milgram and Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University (follow-on study) are basically obedient to the researcher due the situational factors. The research showed that the commands given by authority figure overrides conscience of people and only few people like Plato, who have rational thinking could counter such authority influence. The thesis of the article is that “People with authority can transform ordinary people to agents of terror and the high level willingness of the participants to take to any step as suggested by the authority basing on the command of the authority assumes
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 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 experiment bought forth the ultimate question in social psychology. How far away is someone go to confirm with society and be obedient to an authority to figure? It has been discovered though such experiments that people will obey orders, even if it inflicts harm on another individual. However, the same individuals were unwilling to inflict harm if it involved personal contact with the individual being harmed or even the sounds of pain and please from the individual being harmed.
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.
The Excerpt “The Peril of Obedience by Stanley Milgram discusses an experiment testing on individuals through cruel and unmoral experiments. After reading Milgram’s text about the experiments conducted to see if individuals would compile with authority even if the command was unmoral. Stanley Milgram, an excerpt From “The Perils of obedience”, states that Milgram is making the following statement concerning the condition of the experiment: “This condition of the experiment undermines another commonly offered explanation of the subjects’ behavior- that those who shocked the victim at the most severe levels came only from sadistic fringe of society” (Milgram 699). By stating this Milgram explains that even if it means harming other human beings
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
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
In 1974 Stanley Milgram conducted the classic study of obedience to authority. The study looked into how far individuals would be willing to go, and were asked could they deliver increasingly devastating electric shocks to a fellow human being, as they were requested to do so by the professor in charge of the experiment.
The trait of obedience lies at the heart of the modern world; delegation the norm across the nation, across the world. Today, jobs are wheels on a cog and everyone seems to report to someone else higher-up. A scientific experiment (lauded by some, abhorred by others) performed by Stanley Milgram in the year 1963 seemed to indicate that obedience could effect evil results. Psychologist Diana Baumrind of the University of California despises the experiment, and in her critique of Milgram's work, the "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience," calls it unethical and a violation of the sacred trust between experimenter and subject (Baumrind 90). She also criticizes Milgram's comparison of Adolf Eichmann as similar to the subjects in
* The IV was the presence of the authority figure and the DV was the
This study was an extension of Stanley Milgram’s experiment of obedience to authority, known as the shock experiment. This study presented that when giving an order by someone who has authority, people would deliver what they would have assumed to be extreme levels of electrical shock to other participants who responded incorrectly to a question.
Obey At Any Cost? - Milgram (1963) The Stanley Milgram’s study “Obey At Any Cost” conducted in 1963, had a focus on the obedience of one over an authority figure and to what extent can one go to respond their commands. This study was influenced by the actions made by the Nazi SS officers and soldiers who committed atrocities during the Holocaust, 20 years after this study was conducted. Forty male volunteers were assigned to be a “teacher" and teach the “learner” a list of word pairs, which in this case, the “learner” was an actor behind the wall who wasn’t actually being shocked. Once the “learner” made a mistake, the teacher was directed to shock the learner, increasing the level of shook each time more and more. "
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
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.
In “Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram talks about obedience as a basic element in society. He reinforces this prevalent theme included in our everyday lives by sharing the results of an experiment he orchestrates at Yale University. The goal of the experiment was to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person just because somebody with higher authority instructed them to do so. In this case the ordinary citizen is the naïve subject who acts as the teacher and administers shocks to a victim, who is actually just an actor. Milgram highlights four subjects; Gretchen Brandt, Fred Prozi, Morris Braverman, and Bruno Batta. Through his organization style and dialogue Milgram progressively makes the reader ponder how they would react if they were to be in the experiment themselves.