The Milgram Experiment ( 5 W ' S And How )?

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.

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

The Milgram Experiment violates three of the five principles outlined in the Five General Principles of Ethics. Milgram wanted to see if there was a connection between “the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience” (McLeod, 2007). Milgram’s hypothesis that he based his experiment on was “How the German people could permit the extermination of the Jews?” (Dan Chalenor, 2012). The first one that Milgram’s experiment violated was “Principle A: Beneficence and Nonmaleficence” which is where “psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm” (Ethical principles, 2013, p. 3, para. 3). The second principle that was violated was “Principle B: Fidelity and Responsibility” which is where

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

Milgram was interested on learning if people would hurt someone if given instructions to do so, Stanley Milgram recruited 40 males, ages ranging between 20 and 50 with jobs varying from unemployed to professionals. The participants drew straws to determine their positions (Learner or Teacher) although this was rigged so an actor was chosen as the learner every time and the volunteer as the teacher. As the learner got a question wrong the teacher would administer a shock, each wrong question the intensity of

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.

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, and other members of the community also questioned the nature of obedience. Milgram reflected back to the 1933 events of the Holocaust. Milgram began to question the intentions of the soldiers serving under Eichmann. Why would all those German soldiers go along with kill millions of innocent Jews, slaves, homosexuals, children, and gypsies? Were the soldiers just following the orders of Adolf Eichmann, leader of the German Army? Milgram was interested in doing the obedience to authority figures study because he questioned if Adolf’s men were just following his orders, and this lead to killing of eleven million innocent victims during the time period of the Holocaust. Milgram became enthusiastic in researching the limit that the average person would go to obey orders from their authority figures, even if that meant

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

Is Milgram justified in detailing a possible connection between his experiment and the Holocaust shortly after it happened? Diana Baumrind inclines towards disagreeing with him; however, she is not immediately discernible on whether she agrees with him which detracts from her overall effectivity. Baumrind believes Milgram’s subjects were concerned about their victims thus breaking the parallel between his experiment and the genocide in the Holocaust (Baumrind 93). A recollection of chronological events of the Holocaust created by the University of South Florida effectually refutes Baumrind’s belief by stating the “death camps proved to be a less personal method for killing Jews” (Florida Center for Instructional Technology). If the Nazis were making the death camps less personal, then Milgram is justified in providing the Nazis as examples in his experiment report because if his subjects continued to obey when they were concerned with the victims, then why would they reverse their decision to obey if the victim was made less personal? Milgram could have been slightly more effective and fair by acknowledging the difference between his experiment and Nazi Germany in that in his experiment the subject had no interaction with the experimenter beforehand while the Nazi Party built obedience towards them for almost a decade before they started to systematically abuse the power of

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.

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

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.”

Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”

Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.

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.