Milgram Experiment Stanley Milgram created a series of psychological experiments that studied the extent of a human beings willingness to obey an authority figure who informed them to commits acts not in correspondence with their own personal beliefs. Milgram started the experiments because he was intrigued by the German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who many believed that he and his troops were just following orders. The experiments have been tried with various societies and countries. The experiment showed the extreme outcomes that obedience plays with an individual in certain circumstances. The experiment consisted of three individuals. The individuals filled the roles of the authoritative role, the Teacher, and the Learner.
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
Hofling (1966) created a more realistic study of obedience than Milgram's by carrying out field studies on nurses who were unaware that they were involved in an experiment. McLeod, S. (2016). Hofling's Hospital Experiment of Obedience | Simply Psychology. [online] Simplypsychology.org. Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/hofling-obedience.html [Accessed 8 Oct. 2016].” The experiment was conducted on 22 night nurses when a Dr. Smith (Stooge) phones the hospital and had asked the nurses to check if they had the drug astroten. The maximum dosage was meant to be 10 mg but they were asked to administer 20 mg to a patient. Dr. Smith instructed them he was busy and needed to hurry and would sign the correct authorization forms in the near
Another instance where V 's actions harm innocent people without caring was when he ordered innocent people to wear Guy Fawkes masks and march to the parliament to watch the explosion. These citizens could have been killed by the military officers who waited for orders to strike though no orders were given. If V was a revolutionary, he could have found the way of making a statement without risking the lives of the innocent citizens. His evil actions present him as a rebel against the government and his fellow citizens. He also states that ‘ 'violence could be used for good. ' ' V 's actions of not caring about the others were the same as compared to Stanley Milgram experiment actions. The subjects in this experiment were suffering, but the experimenter did nothing to relieve the students the pain. Instead, he urged the teachers to continue to torture the students knowing very well they were suffering from the high voltage. The teachers played the sadist role as they agreed as they completely obeyed the experimenter 's instructions. V 's evil actions also present him as a sadist by enjoying hurting people and killing the ones who were in charge of the experiments.
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
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.
Through many events in our history as a race, tragedies have occurred due to the extreme form of nationalism called ultra-nationalism. Many examples of this include the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnia genocide and the second world war, where over 55 million had died and the near extinction of a race also occurred. Many of the war criminals claimed that they were “simply following orders”. This is shown in Scott Milgram’s book obedience to authority and Veronica Roth’s movie Divergent, they both use example to prove this argument; one example would be the Milgram experiment; which involved a subject who would get shocked every time they got the answer wrong and the voltage of the shock would increase as the experiment progressed, and the teacher
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.”
A widely-asked question is “Why did the subordinates of Adolph Hitler blindly follow his immoral orders?” Well, that is exactly why Stanley Milgram conducted experiments to test how far an ordinary person would go to inflict pain onto a stranger. The Nazi killing was brutal and inhumane, but the people conflicting death upon thousands felt no remorse or guilt so the Milgram Experiment was used to finally get answers. Milgram concluded that many will go to extreme lengths to obey authority and tend to believe what they are doing is the right thing to do since their authoritive figures believe in their orders as well.
Synthesis Essay: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments Nobody would want to hurt another human being. It would be horrible to know someone wanted to willingly hurt someone. Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, conducted an experiment on obedience during the time he was a professor at Yale University. His experiment was surrounded by the idea of authority.
Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience was a laboratory study to investigate how far people will go in obeying authority. The experiment took place at Yale University; this was a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Milgram invented the experiment to find out,"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 experiment involved 40 males aged between 20 and 50 from a range of background’s i.e. Construction workers to Doctors. All participants were from the New Haven area in the United States of America. The subjects had all applied to be involved in the study through a local newspaper advertisement and were paid $4.50(Grahame, 2009).
How people will respond to an apparent authority figure giving immoral commands has been a question many psychological researchers have been interested in since Milgram's experiment on obedience but due to institutional review boards it has been difficult to conduct further research. Upon approval from the IRB Bocchiaro, Zimbardo, and Van Lange conducted an experiment very similar to Milgram's but with a focus on "the psychosocial dynamics involved in reporting wrongdoing to higher authorities which is a phenomenon known as whistle-blowing" (Bocchiaro, Zimbardo, and Van Lange, 2012). Using Milgram's paradigm as the base to their study they decided to go well beyond by giving their participants the extra option of reporting the unjust authority
A lot of people argued that Milgram’s experiment was unethical, but made sense logically. His ”experiment was carried out in the shadow of the Holocaust. The trial of Adolf Eichmann had the world wondering how the Nazis were able to persuade so many ordinary Germans to participate in the murder of innocent people” (Cohen A24). During world war two (WW II), Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis’ came to power through his dictatorship which ultimately led to the demise of millions of Jews in order to create a master race. With the obedience of the militia, he rose to power annihilating any freedoms Jewish people had. His tactics were brutal and irreconcilably fatal for all who disobeyed him.
Today, Milgram’s experiment would be conducted differently; prior approval of members of the institutional review board would ensure the rights of the individuals participating. The primary concern Milgram’s experiment was that the participants in the experiment were explicitly deceived, both about the nature of the study and about the reality of the electric shock. The procedure of Milgram’s experiment study would be considered unethical and would be not be approved by the standards upheld today. People involved in making the research focus on how to protect best the participants as well as a valid purpose of the study. Protective guidelines like the IRB and inform consent are made to ensure ethical research. An ethics panel must approve research
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University, conducted a series of experiments on obedience to explain some of the concentration camp horrors perpetrated during World War II. He tested the subjects' willingness to cause pain to another person if instructed to by an authority figure.
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.