Stanley Milgram Chapter Summaries

In his article “The Perils of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to determine if the innate desire to obey an authority figure overrides the morality and consciousness that had been already established in an individual. After Milgram conducted his experiments he concluded that 60% of the subjects complied to an authority figure rather than their own morals. There was additional testing outside the US which showed an even higher compliance rate. Milgram reasoned that the subjects enjoyed the gratification from the experimenter, who was the authority figure in the experiment. He noted that most of the subjects are "proud" to carry out the demands of the experimenter. Milgram believed for this was the reason, why the German

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 Lauren Slater’s article Rat Park, Slater talks about Bruce Alexander’s study and experiments on addiction. Alexander’s experiment consists of lab rats in two environments. The first is a caged environment and the second was a “perfect environment” called Rat Park. Rats in each environment were given two choices of water. One study group had regular water and the second was a form of heroin in water. The caged rats chose to drink the drugged water until they were placed into the “perfect” rat park environment. Once placed in this environment, theses rats stopped drinking the drugged water and started to drink the regular water. The rodents originally placed in the rat park drank

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 Perils of Obedience”, social psychologist Stanley Milgram reveals the results of an experiment he performed trying to see if one would hurt another in order to obey authority. The experiments involved three subjects: the experimenter (authority), the teacher, and the learner. The experimenter only made sure that the experiment was performed, while the teacher had to read a series of words and the learner, strapped in an electric chair, had to remember the words read to him. If the learner incorrectly responded to the teacher, the learner would be given an electric shock. As the learner starts to give wrong answers the shock level rises.

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

One mystery of health and science is the problem of addiction and how we treat or even cure it? Many call it a disease, problem, or an issue in which he or she has no will power over the power of the drug. The idea of addiction and the future of curing/treating it is debated in Laura Miller’s article “Addiction is not a disease”, Benoit Lewis’ article “An Anti-Addiction Pill”, and the Ted Talk about addiction knowledge and it’s preconceived notions. The overarching themes/ideas/issues that are addressed in each of the readings are the need for a better health system that can better treat addicts, the need to better understand addiction and the human brain, and the need to understand the people who use drugs and the reasons for why they do so.

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.”

In Stanley Milgram’s experiment, “The Perils of Obedience,” one person signed up to aid in a study of learning and memory; this person was the “teacher.” This person did not know the other person accompanying him in the study is an actor. This person was a “teacher” in the study, and the actor was the “learner;” there was another actor, the “experimenter,” who was the authority

stressed and he hesitates about fulfilling the experimenter's orders. Desperation and the manifest suffering of the accomplice force the subject to stop the experiment; however, the legitimate authority orders him to continue. In this experiment, Milgram aims to investigate when people refuse to obey and defy authority in an explicitly contradictive situation.

Although no such experiment can be 100% conclusive, the Milgram experiments do shed considerable (and disturbing) light on the behavior of ordinary people in obedience of authority. They also explain, to a large extent, the seemingly perplexing behavior of many ordinary Germans during World War II and some American soldiers in Vietnam. (“Milgram,” Obedience to Authority..).

Does this prove that addiction is not a conscious decision, but rather a biological disposition that can be affected by the environment? Since addiction varies between species and some love drugs where others hate them, the results in testing on these rats were it heightened their impulsive behavior, which was directly caused by the availability of the substance, lack of stimulation, and the environmental change (Ferland, Zeeb, Yu, Kaur, Taves, Winstanley

Imagine laying on the floor in your own pool of sweat—miserable, your mind bouncing off the walls while the cloud of your darkest thoughts looms over you. Teeth chattering anxiously, waiting to receive the next second, minute, hour of painless bliss. This—this is the life of an addict; does this horror appear to be a choice or more like a disease haunting the mind of the user? Despite the fact a choice was needed to initiate the result, addiction itself is a debilitating disease NOT a choice due to initial influences and anatomical changes to the brain.

Addiction can come in many forms, leading to a whole array of symptoms and consequences. Addiction can impact on a person’s wellbeing, behaviour, functioning and cognitions. We have the ability to use different kinds of methods in order to find out about questions on how addiction can form, animal studies can indicate how drugs may affect humans. There have been many major advances in sophistication and complexity of animal models of addiction showing us

Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.