Stanley Milgram Report

In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.

One of the most controversial studies in the history of psychology is Stanley Milgram’s Obedience experiment, which revealed the power of obedience and the horrendous acts people would commit when faced by an authority figure. Milgram selected male participants to be part of a learning study. He got people to be either the learner or the teacher. It was fixed that they were always the teacher. The teacher would shock the learner if they would get the problem wrong. The results showed that the participants would obey if person giving orders is close by, if person giving orders is perceived as legitimate authority figure, if person giving orders is affiliated with prestigious institution, if victim is in separate room. Milgram’s experiment changed how people viewed what others would do in situations. People could see that the ones doing horrendous acts are not any different than the average person rather they are just people following order. Milgram showed that obedience is a very powerful tool and anyone can be subjected to be under the influence. Another similar experiment is the Stanford Prison experiment, which had college students acting like guards and inmates. The participants took their roles very seriously. The guards started to treat the inmates bad and started to physically abuse them. The experiment was a success in the sense it proved that people will take on these roles and abide by them but, it was alarming to

In many situations, there have been authority figures with mass followings. Often the power the leader holds over their followers can influence them to do negative things. Many people believe that they can be independent enough to resist any pressure put on them by an authoritative figure. If this was true, then why do genocides mark the pages of history books around the world? Stanley Milgram sought to answer this budding question. He used his scientific authority to conduct an experiment which would reveal that most people would succumb to authority and obey their commands. This contradicts what most people would like to believe about themselves and their morals. Many people believe that they would never harm another human being, even under pressure from an authoritative figure, the Stanley Milgram Experiment proves that this is false. Although the experiment left its participants psychologically harmed, the results discovered why genocides continue to happen. Most people collapse under the pressure and obey any command given to them rather than doing what they believe is right.

The Milgram experiment illustrates people 's reluctance to confront those who abuse power. By recruiting and deceiving people of all different backgrounds, he manipulated them into using punishment on people’s ability to learn. The Milgram experiment helps psychologists and sociologists explain the reasoning behind knowingly conflicting pain for a certain outcome. Milgram contributed path-breaking experiments towards the research between obedience to authority. He furthered knowledge in social networks and urban psychology.

After WW2 was over in 1945, Nazi soldiers were rounded up and put on trial for their killings. For most of the soldiers put on trial, their excuse for killing people was that they were following orders. With this idea in the back of his mind, a social psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram created an experiment to figure out how obedient a person really was to their authority figure. According to Kristen Fescoe, a publisher of the Online Psychology Degree Guide, the Milgram experiment is one of the 25 most influential psychological experiments in history because of its enduring impact in the psychological community. This essay reveals what the experiment was for and how it affected the world.

Stanley Milgram (1963), who was a psychologist at Yale University carried out a study to establish whether ordinary people are likely to be obedient to their authority. He concentrated on the compliance between a person's moral sense and authority. The subject of his experiment were people who were held responsible for Germany war crimes claimed in their defence they stated that they acted on the orders by the authorities.

At this point, the Teacher and Learner were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. The Teacher was then given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample what the Learner would supposedly to receive during the experiment. After the Teacher was given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the Learner. The Teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. To respond the Learner would press a button to indicate their answer, if the answer was wrong the teacher would shock the Learner with the voltage increasing by 15-volts for each wrong answer, if correct the Teacher would read the next word pair. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer the Learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a series of wrong answers the Learner would start complaining about their heart, afterwards there would be no response from the Learner at all. Many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner at this point in the experiment. Some paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment, while most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects even began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress when they heard the screams of the

One conclusion is that most people are willing to do whatever an authority figure tells them to do. Most people believe that an authority figure probably knows more than they do so they are willing to do what authority figures say. Another important conclusion from his experiment is that people are easily deceived. They are willing to look past their own moral judgements and do what they are told to do. They believe in what an authority figure says even if it is not true. A third conclusion about human behavior is that there is no exact personality trait that is linked with defiance or obedience. This means that our view of authority is most likely learned through observational learning. It is engrained in children to listen to authority figures. Through school, work, and our parents people’s behavior toward authority figures are molded. Those are the three most important conclusions about human behavior that were gained through Milgram’s

During the post-Holocaust era, Stanley Milgram investigated how people respond to authority when the order contradicts their ethical values. Would they harm innocents under orders? Milgram researched obedience by having men come in to a lab and pose as teachers. Their task was to punish the learner, a secretly-hired actor, by instigating electrical shocks whenever he failed. An experimenter, the authority, firmly commanded the subject to continue testing the learner. Although Milgram hypothesized a higher disobedience, 65% of subjects shocked the learner to the maximum voltage (p.34). He concluded obedience clouded people’s morals. Why? People are conditioned to follow authority.

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.

Stanley Milgram was disturbed by how easily people obeyed Hitler during World War II. He wanted to understand what made all of those people treat Jews so poorly in such a short amount of time. Milgram used this confusion to put together a well thought out experiment about obedience between a subject and a person of authority. This turned out to be one of the most influential experiments ever performed. He wanted to find out if people’s morality to others could outweigh their natural obedience to an authority figure. Milgram became a profound social psychologist through his background, experiment and his findings.

Stanley Milgram was interested in whether people would purposefully inflict pain on another person when they were instructed to do so by a figure of authority. Conversely, Slater et al. were trying to establish whether using a virtual world and avatar could elicit the same behaviours as though it were a real world with a real person. This meant that although Milgram was looking into obedience and Slater et al. were looking into physical and emotional responses towards an avatar, both studies improved overall knowledge of human behaviour.

People are known to do atrocious things when they are told to by authoritative figures. The question is why; why would a seemingly non-violent person do something that acts against their morality unless urged to by an authoritative figure? Nonetheless, the average person does not often commit immoral acts of their own will without retaliating and therefore the situation needs further inspection, and that is the case with Milgram’s experiment (Milgram’s experiment as cited in McDermott et al. 115 ). In Stanley Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of Obedience” experiment the research indicates that authority figures can cause the average person to commit immoral acts such as

The experimenter and teacher then returned to the experimental room, occupied by an ominous-looking shock delivery machine. Here, experimenter instructed the teacher to read the first word of each word pair followed by four options. The learner’s task was to choose which of the four had been previously paired with the first word. Each time the learner was incorrect, the teacher was to administer an electric shock. Additionally, with each successive incorrect response, the severity of the shock was to be increased. The lowest level was relatively harmless, just 15 volts, and labeled on the machine as a “slight shock.” As the severity of the shock increased, so did the machine’s labels, through “Moderate,” “Strong,” “Very Strong,” “Intense,” “Extreme intensity,” and “Danger: Severe shock” until finally reaching a level the English language apparently had no words to describe, starkly labeled “XXX,” marking the final two levers designed to deliver 435- and 450-volt shocks,

The Milgram experiment illustrates people 's reluctance to confront those who abuse power. By recruiting and deceiving people of all different backgrounds, he manipulated them into using punishment on people’s ability to learn. The Milgram experiment helps psychologists and sociologists explain the reasoning behind knowingly conflicting pain for a certain outcome. Milgram contributed path-breaking experiments towards the research between obedience to authority. He furthered knowledge in social networks and urban psychology.