In Bridgeport, Massachusetts a social psychologist performed an experiment that would alter our perspective of humanity. Stanley Milgram was studying obedience following WWII. With a Jewish background and an education in social psychology, he wanted to explore the obedience of German people. He thought the atrocities committed during WWII could be attributed to a highly obedient country and culture. Milgram would soon come to realize obedience is an integral part of human nature.
Milgram theorized that if a person was asked to shock another person within an experiment, they would quit before reaching high voltages. The three roles in his experiment would be the learner, the experimenter, and the teacher; the subject of Milgram’s study was
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The experimenter and subject were situated together in an adjoining room. In my opinion, whoever is in the room with you will have the most influence over you. I assume that the physical presence of the experimenter in the same room as the subject had more impact when compared to the detached voice of the learner in a separate room. I can only wonder whether the results would be different if the subject had to see the learner as they were “shocked”. This is comparable to the way people freely express profanity towards other individuals on the internet, but would never cause harm to another person when brought face to face. Aggression protected by anonymity or even physical detachment is timeless. It can alter the dynamics of any interaction. I also wonder if it was clear that the subject could leave if uncomfortable. The prompts from the experimenter were meant to test obedience of the subject. But within a scientific experiment, I believe it may have limited the subjects’ freedom to leave at their own will. I am also curious to know whether people would rebel more freely, when tested in a group setting. I feel as though data collected on obedience of a group under authority would be more applicable to reality.
I consider what decisions I would make as the subject, and I honestly think that I would fall into the majority who carried out the whole experiment. Part of my willingness to follow the procedure would be based on my trust in scientists and the scientific
However, in the Burger experiment, the maximum shock level available for use was 150 vaults, unlike the 450 volts available for use in the Milgram obedience experiment. Also, all of the participants in the Burger study were carefully screened, with hopes of weaning out persons who were familiar with Mailgram’s research or likely to experience adverse effects after participating in Burger’s study. After the screening process, participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. Participants in the base condition were escorted to the lab and introduced to the experimenter and confederate. Similar to the Milgram study, the experimenter and confederate followed a script. When the participant seemed uneasy and began to resist, the experimenter insisted on the participant’s cooperation. The script for the confederate included shrieks of pain and verbal phrases of distress. The experiment ended when the participant either refused to go on with the experiment or after the participant administered the 150-volt shock (Burger, 2009). The results showed that more than half of the participants in the base condition attempted to go on with the experiment after the 150-volt shock, thus supporting the
To experiment more on the participant’s response, another independent variable that could have influenced responses would have been if the participants, the teachers of the experiment, were able to see the learners. That way it replicates more of a learning environment where learners and teachers are face-to-face. In this case, both sides could still be in separate rooms, but instead there’s a screen showing the teacher the learner. Since the learner is only an actor and no actual harm is being inflicted unto them, and they could act like they are being shocked as well. Additionally, as the teacher is able to see the learner, a more formidable response is created as they can visually see
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
Near the 1960 Yale University psychologist Stanley Miligram began what would become one of social psychology’s most famous experiments. Milgram began his work during the widely publicized trial of the World War Two Nazi war criminal Otto Eichmann. In Eichmann’s defense along with other Nazis for sending millions of people to their deaths was that he was simply following orders of his superiors.
The Milgram Obedience Study was an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to observe how far people would obey instructions that resulted in harming another individual. The experiment consisted of a “learner” engaging in a memory task and a “teacher” testing the “learner” on the task, administering electrical shocks to the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was given; the electric shocks started out small from 15 volts, labeled as “SLIGHT SHOCK”, all the way to 450 volts, labeled as “X X X”—of course, that was what the participant was told. The true purpose of the experiment was not disclosed until after the experiment and the “random selection” of who would be the “teacher” or “learner” was rigged so that the participant was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was always an actor. The shocks, naturally, were never given to the “learner”, and the “learner” gave responses that were scripted, both in answers to the questions and in responses to the shocks.
Stanley Milgram writes about his shocking experiment in “Perils of Obedience.” Milgram writes on the behaviors that the people had during the experiment. Milgram had an experiment that involves two people. One person was a student and the other a teacher. The student was strapped into an electric chair and was required to answer certain questions. The teacher asked a certain word, and the student must know the pair that goes with it. If the student answered the question incorrectly, the teacher must shock the student. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the volts increase. Milgram was expecting the teachers to back out of the experiment once they saw the student in pain for the first time, but surprisingly enough, more than sixty percent of the teachers obeyed the experimenter and continued on with the experiment, reaching up to four-hundred-fifty volts. After three times of the four-hundred-fifty volt shock, the experiment was called to halt.
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.
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.
Starting at the 180 volt mark, he began to show signs of distress at the learners remarks of pain. However, due to the experimenter urging him to continue, he went on giving electrical shocks up to the 450 volt mark. Because of these results, Milgram’s study was questioned. Critics believed his subjects, Yale Undergraduates, were not “ordinary people.” His experiment was then replicated in Munich, Princeton, Rome, South Africa, and Australia with the same results.
The experiment went like this: there were three positions with one being the teacher, one the learner, and the other an experimenter. These three roles were filled in by volunteers and one person would pick one while the actor would pick one and both had to pick slips to find out what role he was given but unknown to the volunteer, they both said teacher and the actor would claim to pull learner so they the volunteer always had to be the teacher. Then the teacher was given a sample shock to see what the learner would experience. Then the teacher would say word pairs to the learner and if he got them wrong then the learner was “given” a shock. There actually was no shocks. The instructor would prod the teacher to continue if the teacher stopped giving the shocks. This experiment raised many ethical concerns when dealing with scientific research because of the emotional stress on the teacher figure. Some people when doing this experiment started laughing oddly or were stressed out because of the physical pain given to the learner or the pain
The experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram have become one of the most controversial and most influential experiments in the world of psychology. In 1963 the Milgram experiments took place at Yale University, and tested subjects on obedience to authority. While reading Stanly Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience” the topic of authority to obedience is discussed by Milgram stating: “Obedience is one of the most basic an element in the structure of social life as one can point to” (691). Submission to authority is not a new concept, but with the Milgram experiments it has been given a new insight to Obedience to authority. Milgram was inspired to conduct the experiments because of the events before and during World War II, and the Nazi’s ability to maintain control of the Jewish people. While the experiments performed were cruel and insensitive, I agree with the conclusions Milgram gained from the experiments because people are taught to obey authority from childhood, and Ordinary people can commit immoral acts and, defiance can result in punishment.
Proximity between the participant and the learner was changed, with it ranging from the learner not being heard or seen at all (yielding 100% obedience), to the participant holding down the learners hand and arm onto a metal plate, which they believed was shocking the learner (decreasing obedience to 30%). Milgram himself reported significant differences between these proximity conditions, but when Blass (1991) evaluated Milgram’s (1963) work, he reports the analyses and shows that regardless of whether a participant is close to the learner physically and emotionally, they still acted in a similar way. The fact that Milgram did not report these analyses also shows how there might have been some selective reporting in what he wanted the public to see. Blass’ (1991) analyses display how the situation was not necessarily that powerful, and that the participants acted in similar ways regardless of the different types of contexts they were put in. Furthermore, there was also another version of the study (state exactly which experiment this was) in which the participants could decide for themselves how much voltage to shock the learner to. It comes as a relief that they shocked significantly lower than the baseline conditions, showing that when the situation allows freedom, the individual can make a decision. However, I would argue that even though they had the freedom to administer the shock level of their choice, they still actually administered a
My opinion on Miligram’s research is that, the results that were collected from this experiment make a lot of sense. After reading this information I wasn’t too surprised at the results. I found it very common for someone to follow another person of authority in a situation like that one. I haven’t been put in a situation like that; however, if someone of a higher position directs me, I tend to not question them. I believe this type of research is okay to do as long as the learner is not harmed. I would hope that since it stated that the learner was an accompliance, that maybe the learner wasn’t really getting shocked. However, this does show that people tend to follow the directions of those of authority, even if it means harming others.
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.
The purpose of Milgram’s experiment was to see how far people would go to obey authority. His scientific methods followed the scientific procedure and produced external validity. There were 20 variations of Stanley Milgram’s experiment some factors remained consistent throughout all variations, while some remained the same, while some changed. The four experimental conditions grew in intensity. In the first condition, also known as remote feedback, the learner was isolated from the subject and could not be seen or heard except at three hundred volts when he pounded on the wall. At three hundred and fifteen volts he was no longer heard from until the end of the experiment. The naive subject was required to keep administering shocks with an unresponsive human at the other end. Put yourself in the teacher’s shoes. In the second condition (voice feedback) the learner was placed in an adjacent room, when he started to shout and protest at lower shock levels he could be heard through the crack in the door. In the third