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Stanley Milgram Assignment

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Milgram Assignment
I. In 1962, Stanley Milgram, a Social Relations professor at Yale University conducted an experiment on the internal struggle between a person’s innate obedience to authority and their standards of morality. Milgram was intrigued by former Nazi officers justifying their horrific actions with the excuse that they were merely following orders. Milgram’s experiment, heavily reliant on unknowing participants, recruited 40 male individuals aged 20-50 years old--with a preference for individuals who were not educated--with a newspaper ad that promised four dollars as payment for their contribution to memory research. Subjects were led into the test area in pairs, accompanied by an experimenter, and paid immediately. The …show more content…

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

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