Stanley Milgram Experiment Essay

The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1963 by Stanley Milgram in order to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and to personal conscience. The experiment consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, and who’s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. The roles of this experiment included a learner, teacher, and researcher. The participant was deemed the teacher and was in the same room as the researcher. The learner, who was also a paid actor, was put into the next room and strapped into an electric chair. The teacher administered a test to the learner, and for each question that was incorrect, the learner was to receive an electric shock by the teacher, increasing the level of shock each time. The shock generator ranged from

Milgram was interested on learning if people would hurt someone if given instructions to do so, Stanley Milgram recruited 40 males, ages ranging between 20 and 50 with jobs varying from unemployed to professionals. The participants drew straws to determine their positions (Learner or Teacher) although this was rigged so an actor was chosen as the learner every time and the volunteer as the teacher. As the learner got a question wrong the teacher would administer a shock, each wrong question the intensity of

Baumrind accuses Milgram of mistreating his subjects during the experiment. She states that, “It has become more commonplace in sociopsychological laboratory studies to manipulate, embarrass, and discomfort subjects” (Baumrind 225). She does not condone such studies that cause a person to feel that way. The teacher in the experiment is the only one feeling discomfort. In a way, Milgram is the one who is actually administering 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.

Milgram proved his belief be a series of 20 experiments with 1000 participants. He studied how people would respond to outright commands given by someone of authority to give punishment on a learning. So, if the learner gives the wrong answer the teacher(participant) would admit a bolt of electric shock delivered by a switch. Would the participants be obedient to the social constraints of authority or disobey the authority(experimenter), hence, delivering a bolt of shock or not delivering a bolt of shock? Also, at what level will the participant disobey and refuse to give punishment to the learner? Personally, I feel my best choice if I was a participant in the study is the choice from the beginning of the experiment to not continue to participate. Still, I think it is very possible to get wrapped up in wanting to please the authorities persuasion and submit to their direction, then, the outcome is giving punishment to the learner long after my moral sense tells me to stop. Ultimately, if the study was conducted today many people believe our culture in America has not changed enough to get a different outcome in a study like Milgram’s

Milgram wanted to know if the solders that were involved in the tragic Holocaust willingly were a part of slaughtering more than six million people in the concentration camps. Were the solders psychopaths, or were they just doing as they were told? Werhane also informed that the experiment took place at Yale University in 1960 that consisted of three participants, one was said to be the teacher, the second was the experimenter, and the third was the learner. Although it appeared to the teacher that the roles were assigned by drawing lots, the roles were pre-determined. The teacher was told that the experiment was to help understand the effect of punishment on

The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous studies in psychology. It was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University. The purpose of the experiment was to study how far people would go in obeying an instruction from an authority figure if it involved hurting another person. Milgram wanted to study whether Germans were more obedient to authority as this was what people believed was the main reason for Nazi killings in World War II. 40 males were chosen to participate in the study, and were paid $4.50 for attending. The experiment was carried out as follows:

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

The Milgram experiment is one of the most controversial psychology experiments of the past century. I was familiar with it prior to accessing the simulation on the elearning site from an ABC television Four Corners episode on the nature of torture. So when I participated in the simulation, I stopped administering the shock at the first sign of distress from the subject at thirty watts. If I was in the actual Milgram experiment I would like to believe that I would have behaved in the same way. Human nature dictates that we believe that only abnormal people are capable of sinister behavior. This belief that internal attributions cause certain behaviours assures us of some stability and security in our day-to-day lives and yet the

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.

Milgram’s experiment was an experiment that tested whether people would people would administer shock to another person even though the person receiving the shock would refuse to participate. During the experiment, Milgram would have the subject be the teacher and the other person people the student. While Milgram believed the experiment produced great results, a lady named Diana Baumrind believed the experiment should have not been conducted at all. Baumrind believed that Milgram’s experiment was not the best experiment because it still needed somethings to be worked out before conducting. There were many things in Milgram’s experiment that raised some red flags. In discussion of Milgram’s experiment, many of

Almost five decades later, Stanley Milgrams famous study of obedience to authority is by far one of the most known and talked about psychological experiments of the twentieth century. Milgram’s ground-breaking research showed participants a side of them that not only shocked them but also brought the world of psychology to a standstill. Milgram’s renowned study where he asked several participants to administer voltage shocks to ‘learners’ behind a screen was one of the most famous research studies done on obedience. The findings of Milgram’s study showed that authority can be a dangerous trait. This was also shown in real life situations such as the devastating time periods of the Holocaust and Abu Ghraib where humans administered shocking

Stanley Milgram’s central focus for his experiment was to demonstrate how far average Americans would go in inflicting pain on somebody. This experiment was initially conducted in 1963, right after the Eichmann’s trial had happened. “Were these Nazis a different kind of human being” since they were killing the Jews left, and right? Everyone thought that the Nazis had no “thresholds of violence.” From this the world needed an explanation for the Nazis’ behavior, so Milgram decided to give it to them. He wanted to prove that the Nazis weren’t vicious human beings, but what they were doing (killing Jews) was just obeying orders. Therefore, he made a basic outline: take an average American, put them in the “right” environment, and this will change them into a “slaughterous Nazi.” Overall, he just wanted to prove that the Nazis were obeying their orders (Wu, 2003) .

Between the Milgram experiment and all the other little experiments ended up raising a lot of eye brows and controversial discussions about the ethics of doing such research. Subjects were exposed to emotional stress, psychological stress and physical stress while being in the experiment (Cherry). Milgram wanted to answer questions which plagued society for a long time, such as “Was human nature inherently evil or could reasonable average people be coerced by authority into performing unnatural actions?” Many believe the study to be unethical due to the fact that the subjects were not fully aware of what it was Milgram was doing. The subjects were deceived into believing they were causing pain and suffering to another human being, when in reality the victim was not in any suffering or pain at all. The fact that they believe they were causing pain to someone else could have caused the

The Milgram experiment is probably one of the most well-known experiments of the psy-sciences. (De Vos, J. (2009). Stanley Milgram was a psychologist from Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected people for his experiment by newspaper advertising. He looked for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.