Stanley Milgram's Court Experiments

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.

The justice system is best known as a pursuit for the truth. It is managed by humans so, it is inevitable not to make errors such as ones that will lead an innocent to be wrongfully convicted. Such a scenario is the David Milgaard case where he supposedly raped and murdered a woman named Gail Miller but really, the foundations of justice were tampered with. The Canadian justice system failed terribly, dismissed millions of dollars and banished the citizens certainty in the system. Most importantly, this even diminished 20 years of a man’s life.

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

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.

Throughout thousands of years, anti-semitic propaganda has increased hatred for Jews through influential figures like Martin Luther, Wilhelm Marr, and Adolf Hitler. It has been proven that the average person will most likely do something wrong if an authority figure tells them to do it or tells them that it is the right thing to do. The Milgram Shock Experiment was an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1961. The experiment tested the average person’s ability to do harm to a stranger if an authority figure told them to do so. It proved that “The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation-...

Shows us much about the dull side of human brain research. the straightforwardness with which we go under the influence of an authority, and the readiness of many individuals to suspend normal guidelines of profound quality and heart when requested to do as such and hand over the obligation regarding their activities to another. Even the most ordinary Person who in most possible conditions could never dream of harming another person, appear to be exasperatingly vulnerable to this imperfection. This experiment relates to Adolf Eichmann who played a role in executing Jews in the Holocaust In his execution he states he was only following orders given by Hitler and was being obedient to authority. The most surprising thing in the Experiment would

1. The researcher in this experiment was psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The study took place at Yale University in the year 1963. The researcher’s hypothesis was that if there is a demanding authoritive figure, then the other person will obey that authoritive figure just because of their position, even if it violates their morality and their ethical beliefs. He based this of his theory that people who would never hurt someone purposely, would if told to do so by a figure of authority.

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 has an enduring impact. His work has influenced society, though his work was incomplete. In “What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram’s Research on the Influence of Authority” by S. Gibson, he discusses other factors overlooked in Milgram’s experiments and demonstrates certain points through the Adolf Eichmann. While Eichmann was on trial for his crimes in WWII, at Yale, Milgram was leading studies.

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

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) .

During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were murdered. One specific person did not cause these deaths, because there was a division of labor. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi organizer of these mass murders, never saw the direct effects of the genocide he was orchestrating. After the Holo-caust, Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to study the levels of obedience to authority; he used his experiment to find where evil resided in people and to discover the cause of the Holo-caust. Some people found his findings useful information, while others thought his experiment was morally unacceptable due to his use of deception. Diana Baumrind, author of “Some Thoughts on the Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s ‘Behavioral Study of Obedi-ence,’” disagrees with Milgram’s use of deception and manipulation in his experiment. Con-trasting Baumrind, Richard Herrnstein, author of “Measuring Evil,” believes deception was nec-essary in order for Milgram’s experiment to be effective. Deception is ultimately needed in the experiment, especially because Milgram’s findings are beneficial information for social science.

In the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders attempted to implicate this excuse as an appropriate defense for what they did in the many concentration camps spread all over Germany. In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanly Milgram conducted a series of experiments to attempt to explain if the Nazi’s who took the orders shared the belief of anti-Semitism with their superior officers or were they truly just “following orders.”

"When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority." (Milgram, 1974) In 1963, the Yale psychologist Milgram had performed a very controversial experiment on the obedience of participants towards an authority’s orders. He had discovered that a very small marginal of participants could resist the demands of an authority figure. This experiment was about learning if people are evil or if they are evil because they are forced to be, this was being questioned because of the atrocities the Nazi’s were committing. The Nazi’s running the concentration camps claimed that they were not evil, they were just following orders, Milgram’s studies suggests that under a set of circumstances, the obedience we normally show authority figures can transform us into evil agents of terror.

The third reason for why people obey is when a person shifts from the autonomous state to the agentic state; this is called the agentic shift. Milgrams participants believed they were ‘just following orders’ and did not consider themselves responsible; his participants even sighed with relief when the experimenter said “I am responsible for what happens here.” Evidence from war criminals, has shown that Eichmann, who was trialled and found guilty for the Nazi war killings as he was the man who organized which camps the Jewish people would end up at, said “it wasn’t my