Research Paper On Milgram Experiment

He conducted 18 different variations of the original experiment. When changing different variables the obedience percentage dropped significantly. These variations showed that when the “authority” figure was wearing some sort of uniform the obedience levels would rise but when the participants question their authority they percentage decreased. In other variations the learner and the teacher were placed in the same room so the teacher can experience the pain the learner was going through. In this variation the obedience fell too. Throughout all of the variations the percentage of participants administering the maximum 450 volts decreased significantly when different variables were added to the

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.

What determines how one behaves? Is it character, situation, both, or neither? In a series of experiments conducted from 1960 to 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram sought to examine the relationship between obedience and authority, in order to examine justifications offered by Nazis for genocide during WWII. While there are several interpretations of Milgram’s results, philosopher Ruwen Ogien uses the results as grounds for criticizing virtue ethics as a moral theory. In doing so, Ogien suggests that “what determines behavior is not character but other factors tied to situation” (Ogien 120). The purpose of this essay is to articulate why I am not persuaded by Ogien’s use of the Milgram experiments to critique virtue ethics.

The Stanley Milgram Obedience experiment is an experiment to replicate Nazis following Hitler’s orders to kill Jews in World War II. Whereas, in this experiment, forty males were recruited to complete this study; they were told it was a memory and learning experiment. In this experiment, every time the subject (learner) answered incorrectly, the recruited male (teacher) would have to shock them. The results were: all forty subjects (teachers) obeyed up to 300 volts, and twenty-five of the so-called teachers, continued to give shocks up to the maximum level of 450 volts.

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.

orders two thirds of the time. These results were the same as the previous experiment done in the 1900’s. Obedience is the same idea as conformity. By definition, obedience

In Stanley Milgram’s article “The Perils of Obedience,” several people volunteer to participate in Milgram’s experiment. It consists of a learner and a teacher. When the learner fails to memorize a word pair, the teacher applies a shock to the learner. The shocks increase in severity with each wrong answer, attaining a maximum voltage of 450 volts. Milgram states many psychiatrists he interviewed before the experiment predicted most subjects would not go past 150 volts, or the point at which the learner starts to ask to leave (Milgram 80). In his first experiment, twenty-five out of forty subjects continued the experiment until the end (Milgram 80). After several more experiments at different locations, Milgram obtained the same results. Milgram

2. A. The research was conducted by first paying his participants $4.50 ($30 today) to come in and take part in the experiment. The group of participants he selected was composed of 40 males between 20 and 50 who were told that the experiment was to test the effect of “punishment on learning“. There was 15 skilled-unskilled workers, 16 white-collar employees, and 9 professionals. Apart from them, there were 2 key participants, a confederate, who was actually a 47 year-old accountant and an actor who dressed as the experimenter. He decided to test the power of obedience in a laboratory which was clever on Milgram’s part. He designed a realistic looking fake scenario, complete with a shock chair and men dressed in lab coats. The most realistic component was the fake shock generator that actually quite scary-looking. It had levels of shock that went up from 30 to 450 volts and the levels were labeled to describe the intensity of the shock. The participants

The two experiments were a tested at different time periods and for different purposes. For instance, the Milgram experiment was originally tested to study obedience to authority, in response to Adolf Eichmann trial, a Nazi war criminal, that stated he,” was just stating orders under the Reich.” The experiment proved to be that under authority rule, actions, even if morally wrong and unethical can be still taken forward with due to a strict authority presence.

For every wrong answer the 'student' gives, the 'teacher' has to shock them. The student is a part of the test, so he is not actually being hurt, but the teacher thinks he is. Over time, as the shocks get stronger and stronger, the student screams, yells, begs for the shocks to stop and then goes quiet. The purpose of the experiment was to focus on the

Many various members of the populace who believed that only a few would rais it to the highest level of 450 volts, were wrong in their predictions. The majority of subjects obeyed the experimenters' orders to the very end of the experiment by administering the highest voltage three times. As the first experiments were conducted on Yale undergraduates, some believed that the results were inconclusive due to the competitive nature of the students. However, the results of the experiment were the same when Milgram tested "ordinary" people. When the experiments were repeated in other areas of the world, the level of obedience was even higher than those

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.

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.”

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

(Brennan 2016). All the students surveyed believed that only a very small percentage of teachers would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally surveyed his colleagues and found that they, too, believed very few participants would progress beyond a very strong shock. In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65% of the experiment participants gave the maximum 450-volt shock. Milgram however also noticed their behaviour. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment). Many were very uncomfortable administrating the shocks. At some point throughout the experiment, every participant stopped and questioned the experiment; some said they would refund the money they were paid for taking part in the experiment. Throughout the experiment, participants displayed varying degrees of anxious behaviour. Subjects were sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting their lips, groaning, digging their fingernails into their skin, and some were even having nervous laughing fits or seizures. (McLeod,