Physiological Evaluation : Obedience And Authority Essay

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

A while after receiving his doctorate, Milgram began studying the justifications of genocide, in particular the case of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was responsible for countless war crimes associated with the Nazis, however he claimed that him and all of his accomplices were simply following orders. A year after Eichmann’s trial, Milgram had set out to find the answer to his new found 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). It is this underlying question that supported the entire experiment, essentially a study focusing on the conflicts between obedience to authority and personal conscience. As in, would you harm a person if you were told to do so by someone with high authority? The experiments began in July of 1961, at Yale University, when Milgram began a search for participants, by publishing a short advertisement in a newspaper.

Stanley Milgram, conducted a study focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. According to the study Migram suggested “that obedience we naturally show authority figures can transform us into agents of terror” (Migram, 1974/1994, p. 214). Milgram experiment was developed for the justification of the act of genocide in World War II. Many of the accomplices in the Holocaust said they were following in order given by Adolf Eichmann. Obedience to superiors is built onto the history of civilized society, and no culture worthy of the name has existed without stressing the respect that is due to legitimate authority of the duties of those in command. Milgram study provides information that supports that

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

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.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, and other members of the community also questioned the nature of obedience. Milgram reflected back to the 1933 events of the Holocaust. Milgram began to question the intentions of the soldiers serving under Eichmann. Why would all those German soldiers go along with kill millions of innocent Jews, slaves, homosexuals, children, and gypsies? Were the soldiers just following the orders of Adolf Eichmann, leader of the German Army? Milgram was interested in doing the obedience to authority figures study because he questioned if Adolf’s men were just following his orders, and this lead to killing of eleven million innocent victims during the time period of the Holocaust. Milgram became enthusiastic in researching the limit that the average person would go to obey orders from their authority figures, even if that meant

In the chapter "The Dilemma of Obedience" of the book Obedience to Authority : An Experimental View, Stanley Milgram explores the concept of obedience to authority, and why people cannot defy authority even the situation is totally conflicting with morality. He introduces his ideas by giving the definition of obedience, and mentions Nazi extermination as an instance of obedience, which contradicts with moral values. According to Milgram, obedience idiosyncratically binds humankind to systems of authority, and links the individual action to political purpose. In terms of observations, obedience accepted as an inveterate behavior inclination, and obeying a system of authority has been comprehended as

As we grow up our parents teach us how to be respectful and very well-mannered. They enforce the importance of saying, “Please, thank you, and excuse me,” when needed. Parents also insist we listen and respect our elders, because they have authority over the world since they have been here the longest. We were raised to comply with the demand of someone who had authority over us. According to Patricia Werhane (1), “In the early1960’s Stanley Milgram undertook his noteworthy study of human obedience to authority. Puzzled by the question of how otherwise decent people could knowingly contribute to the massive genocide of the Holocaust during World War II, Milgram designed an experiment that sought to cause a conflict between one’s willingness to obey authority and one’s personal conscience.”

Can the average person, when confronted by authority and ordered to hurt another human being, be able to do so? According to the results of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on Obedience to Authority and the numerous testimonies from Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials, the answer is yes, provided that the individual committing the act was ordered to do so by an authority figure and/or believes that responsibility will be deferred to said higher authority. There is therefore potential that the actions of the Nazis during the Holocaust can be reasonably explained by the results of Milgram’s experiments and Milgram’s Agency Theory.

As a desperate search for justice, in 1962, Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann wrote in a request for pardon of his death sentencing that he and other low-level officers were forced to serve as mere instruments shifting the responsibility for the deaths of millions of Jews and other groups of individuals to his superiors. The just following orders defense featured heavily in Eichmann's court hearings. In that same year, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, organized a series of experiments that put the assumption to the test, whether regular people would harm another person after following orders from a person of authority. An eye-opening conclusion suggested any human was capable of these acts of evil, especially when under the

In the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders attempted to implicate this excuse as an appropriate defense for what they did in the many concentration camps spread all over Germany. In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanly Milgram conducted a series of experiments to attempt to explain if the Nazi’s who took the orders shared the belief of anti-Semitism with their superior officers or were they truly just “following orders.”

Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”

Why did Milgram decide to study this topic? What was the motivating factor/event that inspired Milgram to research obedience?

A standout amongst the most renowned investigations of compliance in brain research was done by Stanley Milgram (Myers 499). Stanley Milgram was a therapist at Yale University, directed an analysis concentrating on the contention between acquiescence to power and individual still, small voice. He analyzed avocations for demonstrations of genocide offered by those blamed at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials (Myers 499). Their resistance regularly depended on "submission" - that they were simply taking after requests from their bosses. The trial testing started in July 1961, shortly a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann located in Jerusalem (McLeod). Milgram conceived the analysis to answer the inquiry "Would it be able to be that Eichmann and his million assistants in the Holocaust were simply taking after requests? Would we be able to call every one of them accessories?" (McLeod).

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