Stanley Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience

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.

With each wrong answer came an electric shock that the teacher, a random male participant, had to physically cause. The teacher could hear the learner after a while begging to stop. At this point the teachers causing the pain are obviously uncomfortable. Some start by laughing nervously and other just immediately beg to stop the experiment. At this point the experimenter gives a series of orders to push the teacher to continue. As a result, two-thirds of participants carried on shocking the learner to the highest level of four hundred and fifty volts. All the participants involved continued up to three hundred

If a person of authority ordered you inflict a 15 to 400 volt electrical shock on another innocent human being, would you follow your direct orders? That is the question that Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University tested in the 1960’s. Most people would answer “no,” to imposing pain on innocent human beings but Milgram wanted to go further with his study. Writing and Reading across the Curriculum holds a shortened edition of Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” where he displays an eye-opening experiment that tests the true obedience of people under authority figures. He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority

Stanley Milgram, established a new course of study in the psychology of obedience. The purpose of his experiment was to have an idea of to see how people react the autocritical standard; during his experiment, he recorded how people will behave when given a source of power. Milgram gained this idea after the World War II. He believed that some people had the ability to essentially block out human thoughts of morals, ethics, and sympathetics when assigned to a job. The core issue that Milgram faced was finding a way to create a situation to test his theory; because behavior is such a complicated aspect of psychology to test, Milgram had to properly execute the experiment without physical harm from one person to another.

In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, published the findings of his infamous human authority experiment. During this trial, human subjects were tested to discern how far one will go in order to obey the commands of an authority figure. The test subjects were fooled into believing someone was actually being shocked; however, the reality was the other person was simply an actor and never received any shocks. The results were astounding: sixty-five percent of the subjects continued the entire 450 volts, while the rest lasted until at least 300 volts. In response to the experiment, Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkley, examined the actions and moral issues executed by

According to the Oxford dictionary Obedience is defined as a compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority. In many situations authority demonstrates the ability to control man to go against their beliefs in what is morally right. Due to fear and the insecurities of man, authority may push the limits of society to a point where the individual may temporarily give up their identity. This is proven by The Stanford Prison experiment

Growing up my family has always thought me to be obedient, but also know the difference between what is right and wrong. I am not saying that my family or I am perfect, but I have always strived to do the right thing. I understand, in society today that we have jobs and responsibility, that sometimes it can compromise our principles, but like every person, we have certain boundaries that we just cannot let ourselves pass. In “The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram, a study was conducted on several subjects to test their obedience and how far they would go to as the “teacher” to administer a shock to a “student “that the authority figure “experimenter” ordered them to give. Among the test subject was Gretchen Brandt, a thirty-one –year –old

Baumrind fairly claims the “laboratory is not the place” to conduct studies of obedience as the laboratory tends to increase the number of variables above what is desired (Baumrind 90). Science Magazine defends Baumrind’s claim by conducting an experiment directed toward answering the question of the reproducibility of previously conducted psychological experiments. The data collected shows a significant decrease in the strength of the data collected and the number of experiments deemed reproducible was much smaller than those which were reproducible (“Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science”). If the experiment’s results are correct, then Baumrind has fairly contested the integrity of the results of the experiment conducted by Milgram since his results have a stronger chance of not being reproduced in a laboratory than of being reproduced in a laboratory. Milgram adds credibility to his article by mentioning the population from which the subjects were drawn. Initially, Milgram enlists Yale undergraduates to volunteer for his study which led to results consistent with his study, but severely taints the credibility of his experiment. He then modifies his experiment and enlarges to volunteer population to include that of anyone living in the city (Milgram 80-81). His

There has been many variations of this experiment also. For example, the teacher was free to choose the shock level and thirty-eight of the forty subjects did not go above 150 volts. Another example would be when the experimenter gave the instructions by telephone. Only one third of the subjects were obedient in this version of the experiment. The subjects found it easier to disobey when they were not face to face with the experimenter.

The next experiment focuses on obedience and why the tests subjects reacted the way they did. Stanley Milgram reflects on the study conducted and the outcomes of the electric shock study in an article titled “The Perils of Obedience”. The experiment calls for a teacher participant to do word association with a learner. When an incorrect answer is given by the learner, the teacher is under the instruction to administer electric shock on an upwards scale as the experiment continues. There comes a point in the experiment when the teachers feel uncomfortable continuing to shock the learner. Many times though the teacher continues at the urging of an individual overseeing the experiment. The first experiment that Milgram conducted was using Yale undergraduates, the results reflected “about 60 percent of them being fully obedient (696).” Another experiment was then conducted using “ordinary people” as the people of New Haven were labeled (Milgram 696). Milgram made the following statement about the results: “The experiment’s total outcome was the same as we had observed among the students (696).” The study did reflect that even though a person did not agree with the commands especially when putting another individual through he or she did as told more than half of the time. More studies were conducted around the world by other professors; many of the experiments had the same or similar results. There is one study that was conducted that has

Even though the experimenter takes full responsibility of what happens to the learner, the teacher feels horrible about their actions. The experiment causes discomfort for both the teacher and the learner. As the shocks grow stronger, tension begins to arise inside of the teacher. Hesitating slowly consumes the teacher, but the experimenter commands him to pursue. After hesitation, the teacher’s ethics get in the way of what they are told to do.

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.

Before Milgram’s findings, the fact that people were inclined to obey to authority figures was already realized. He just confirmed this belief. Milgram followed effective steps by using precise procedures. He made sure that the experiment reflected features of an actual situation in which a person would obey to an authority figure: offering compensation (monetary reward in this experiment), being under pressure (Prods 1 to 4 in this case), and mentioning that the person who obeys can withdraw. These features can also be seen in a situation where a soldier is commanded to fire, for instance. A soldier will get a monetary compensation, is under pressure to obey because he chose to be part of the military, and he knows that he can resign at any time. Milgram created an experiment so precise and detailed that more than enough evidence was demonstrated.

When I entered into general psychology, I did not think that I would be writing an essay on a psychologist. But as I sit reading about the man that was assigned to me I see why it is an assignment for us to do. Stanley Milgram is who I was assigned to write a paper on, and is someone that is known for many different things.

During the procedure, there wasn’t a learner on the other side. It was a voice recording so each participant (teacher) was equal on what they were hearing so it couldn’t differ on the results. This recording had a fact that could have stopped the teacher to continue. The recording said that the learner had a heart condition. Although Milgram expected most of them to stop after 150 volts, they obeyed the orders of the white-collar experimenter. This experiment couldn’t have been carried out in nowadays because of the ethical issues. The experimenters have to be fully aware and notified about the procedure but if they were told that the main focus of the experiment was to test obedience, they wouldn’t have got complete true results. An important critique of this experiment is that although there are a wide range of occupation, they were all males. Obedience in females could have resulted differently. Another interesting factor of this study that the same terms were carried out again but this time the learner and the teacher could see each other. This difference effected the obedience level as the teacher could see what he was doing to the