Stanley Milgram The Perils Of Obedience Summary

Personally, researching this experiment made me extremely uncomfortable just because I do not believe in causing unnecessary harm to someone who does not deserve it. In this case, harm is the unnecessary stress since the accomplice of the experiment was not actually shocked, he just acted like it. I think that the moderators of the experiment, especially Milgram, should have been upfront in the ad placed in the newspaper over what was going to actually be happening to the people who volunteered. The way the readings and the video made it sound was that it was just a surprise over what actually happened to the subjects. It is shocking to me that he thought that this was something that was morally and ethically right.

Now as the voltage would increase, the fake screams of the learner (the accomplice) would become louder and more agonizing so that the “teacher” would get tricked into thinking he was actually causing the learner physical pain. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether the “teacher” would continue to administer the shocks each time the voltage increased even though he could hear the learners screams just because the experimenter/ authoritative figure would instruct him to do so. The result of the experiment was that 62.5% of the “teachers” went to the max voltage (450 volts) even though the “learner” was instructed to stay quiet once the voltage got above 300 volts to make it seem as if the “learner” had lost consciousness which proved that the majority of people would in fact, listen to what an authoritative figure tells them to do even though it could be causing another severe pain. What you can take away from this is that in the end, the majority of the “teachers” (participants) were willing to administer a fatal shock and potentially end someone’s life just because an authoritative figure instructed them to which proved Stanley Milgram’s purpose of the experiment. Now this experiment was said to be unethical because of the fact that Milgram deceived the participants and tricked them into believing that they could have actually murdered another human being. The experience of

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 1963, Stanley Milgram completed the Obedience to Authority experiment in which participants were misled to believe that they shocked another human being for each wrong answer, with progressively higher voltages. At one point, the other (nonexistent) person appears to die, and stops responding entirely. A high percentage of people went all the way to the highest voltage. This study has been critiqued for ethical and moral shortcomings. Milgram’s study revealed a rather disturbing ability for humans to carry out significant harm, even causing the death of another person, should they put the responsibility of their actions on an authority figure.

Similarly, in Milgram 's study, it contends that obedience of an arbitrary test subject, entitled the “teacher”, was made subservient to assessing whether or not it was feasible for a human being to obey regulations that they identified as morally reprehensible. In the experiment the teacher was commanded by a superior figure, the “experimenter”, to apply voltage shocks increasing in intensity all the way up to a fatal shock for incorrect responses (79). Later in the article Milgram points out that more than half the time the teachers would submit to the orders addressed to them even though the teachers recognized the actions they were taking were morally wrong. Because of this, it obscures the subject as to why the teachers were obedient because unlike Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey surrounded by the military culture there are no reverberations for disobedience for the teachers. As a result of this, Milgram hypothesizes the teacher’s obedience correlated to the fact that the experimenter told the teachers that they would take all the fault if anything happened to the student (81). For this reason, it leads the teaches to use scapegoating to justify their actions which Rob Reiner, director of “A Few Good Men”, would more than coincide with. Parallel, Fromm author of “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” would likewise concur with Milgram 's hypothesis and in return state more

The “teacher” (who had no clue about the experiment) was given direct orders in which he had to carry out. The “learner “gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock the experimenter was to give a series of orders / prods to ensure they continued (Milgram Experiment, Simply Psychology). Some teachers were reluctant and questioned but still went ahead and followed the orders regardless of how uncomfortable they felt, while other teachers had no qualms about the incidents

In pursuit of information, he traveled to Paris, France and Oslo, Norway to study differing conformity rates between countries(Rogers 2016, p 3). Milgram found Norway and the US had similar conformity rates and the French conformed the least(Rogers 2016, p 3). After his graduation from Harvard in 1960, Milgram became an assistant professor at Yale, where he was able to further develop his interest in obedience (Rogers 2016, p 4). Living through WWII and the Holocaust with his Jewish heritage made Milgram more curious about obedience to authority and how it applied in this particular scenario (Blass 1998 page 3). This led Milgram to a question specific to the Holocaust;” Just how far would a person go under the experimenter's orders?” (Milgram 1977). This question became the basis for Milgram’s famous “shock experiments” . He was curious about what made these people commit lethal acts and what factors had influenced them in the process (Blass 1998 page 1). Although his question was specific to the Holocaust, his findings reveal general information and cannot be attributed to particular instances . He wanted to test how far people under the influence of an authority figure would go if they believed they were harming someone to the point of death (Slater 2004 page

In the Milgram Experiment, scientists would ask someone in an electric chair, who was an actor, questions and when he would get them wrong the subject would have to give him a shock. The shocks started low but they increased each time a question was missed. When the actor had missed a certain amount of questions the subject would have to shock them with 450 volts, and “around two-thirds of people went on to give the maximum 450 volts three times in a row” (“I am really…right thing” 1). Two-thirds of this society would choose to be inherently evil when they are asked to do something malicious.

I believe that if I were a subject in this experiment I would not have continued following the orders given. I think once I understood that the ’learner’ is suffering or in pain. I just do not believe that I would be able to continue to cause pain on an innocent human being. Maybe I would not have stopped right away and would have shocked the “learner” a few times, but I am certain that I would have stopped once the 'learner' in the experiment exhibited signs of sever suffering. I would not be able to hadle the screamings of a inasend person knowing that I have the contrall to stop their

In 1961, psychology professor Stanley Milgram conducted quite the controversial experiment called the Milgram Shock Experiment. Milgram paid people four dollars an hour to attend a learning and memory in his lab that quickly transformed into something else entirely. Under the watch of Milgram, the person assigned to be the teacher, would read out words to the other person who was assigned as the student, and was hooked up to an electric shock machine in another room. Every time the student incorrectly repeated the words that was read out to him/her, the teacher then delivers a shock to the student. Starting at fifteen volts (labeled as “slight shock”), the teacher can increase the volts to all the way to four hundred and fifty volts (labeled as XXX). As the teachers reached the higher voltages, some of them refused to go on any further in fear that they might harm the students, defying Milgram’s authority. Some on the other hand, continued to increase the shock, even as the student yelled and pleaded for the shocks to stop till they fell silent. Once the experiment was finished, the person assigned as the teacher was soon to find out that the students were in fact not being shocked, and the cries of pains were prerecorded. The experiment was deemed unethical because of deception that the participants actually believed that they were harming an actual person, unaware that the student is an actor. Also that the participants were exposed to very stressful situations that could have harmed them psychologically and were not given the chance to withdraw from the

It was hard to believe that 60 - 65% of test subjects who were “teachers” didn’t stop the test until the highest amount of shock. I personally would not allow myself to be at fault of someone else's harming, even if a person in authority are telling me to do so.

In Chapter 2 of Opening Skinner's Box By Laurem Slater, The Milgram Experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram was to test people’s obedience to authority. The experiment entitled to shock another person if they got the answer wrong, gradually increasing the shock amount up till lethal shocks. For his findings 65% of the people were able to give another person lethal shocks simply by being instructed to by a man on a white coat. Milgram’s experiment created waves in the world, people questioned it, as it was not to prove anything, solely based on the situation, or even cause trauma to the volunteers. He died in the most ironic way, he suffered several heart attacks and finally one did it, he

The results and conclusion of Milgram’s experiment demonstrated an obedience to authority and “do as you are told” mentality. Many subjects showed signs of tension and were uncomfortable delivering the shocks, yet all 40 subjects obeyed up to 300 volts. Sixty three percent of the subjects continued give shocks until the maximum level of 450 volts was reached. Experts predicted that only one to three percent of the participants would continue to deliver shocks, and that these individuals would have to be psychopaths. However, footage of Milgram’s experiment shows 65% of the subjects continued giving shocks, and none stopped when the learner said he had heart trouble (1962). Milgram carried out eighteen variations of his study, altering the situation

The movie experimenter starring Peter Sarsguard screenplays the story of social psychologist Stanly Milgram and his study regarding obedience in society. This film demonstrated very accurately how the study was truly preformed and the timeline of the story is very accurate. In class we learned of how his study brought out a surprising evidence of human nature and being willing to listen to authority even if they do not want to agree. This film even made a point of explaining the different styles of this study that was done. The evidence discussed in class said how the obedience of participants when down the farther away the researcher stood from them. The film did not show this specific change in the study lay out but it did demonstrate how they rearranged the looks and patterns of the room to see if something as the look of the office affected the obedience of his subjects. Something very important to Milgram’s study is the criticism he received and this film did what I would consider an excellent job of showing how many people were against what he was studying. The book discusses how some of the critiques was that he enjoyed torturing people and causing psychological problems to his subjects and all these things come up during the film after

There was a questioned posed whether the physical separation allowed the volunteers to make the decision to shock another human being. I do not think the physical separation played a part in the psychological decision to inflict pain on another human being. Some people just have the mentality that if the rule says you receive pain then it is not personal. It was also discussed whether it was ethical to lie to all of the volunteers. I do not feel like this was unethical. You have to tell a person only what the directions are in order to get a genuine response. I believe Milgram's research tells us that we have the ability to separate our personal belief from a business ethic. A person who is ok with shocking another human with an amount of voltage that could cause that person death, just because the rule gives them permission, has no individual ethical standards to me. I would have participated in this study. I would not have been a part of anything that inflicts pain on anyone. I would not have agreed to continue once I knew someone was harm being caused to any human. I do not agree, even with the judicial system for a personal reason. I feel like we as humans are subject to error. I would not be able to live with my conscience if we maximized the voltage, causing someone’s death, and then we find out there was a typo in the material. I think today’s people would respond the same way because I think as humans we become less attached to others with each generation. We are living amongst a generation of people who want to give others what they deserve but want to receive mercy when the situation applies to