The Milgram Experiment: A Psychological Test

Milgram conducted an experiment on obedience to authority. His influence came from the second world war, where Nazi’s committed evil crimes and were part of the mass murder of thousands of Jews. Milgram wanted to know what influences people to do evil things like this, and whether it is due to ‘just following orders’ from an authority figure. Slater et al attempted to replicate Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience using a virtual environment. In this essay, I will discuss the similarities and differences between these studies, using evidence to support my points.

The results of Milgram's experiment made news and contributed a dismaying piece of wisdom to the public at large: It was reported that almost two-thirds of the subjects were capable of delivering painful, possibly lethal shocks, if told to do so. We are as obedient as Nazi functionaries. Would they go along with an experimenter's instructions and deliver increasingly harsh electric shocks, up to 450 volts, when the "learner" made a mistake

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

“Don’t eat that, Steve!” yells a worried mother from across the park. Her son, Steve, about to put a chunk of dirt into his mouth looks up at her, confused. “That’s dirt, son, we don’t eat that”, says his mother in a gentle and reassuring voice. Promptly, the boy obeys her, leaving the dirt on the ground and running to her arms. Babies like Steve know that, because their mom says so, they should or shouldn’t do certain things. This early form of obedience is present in human beings from a very early age. This is represented in babies obeying simple commands or prohibitions from their mother (Stayton, Hogan, & Mary D. 1971). This was found to be connected to the mother’s responses to the baby’s actions, such as her tone and her

“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men” Harry Day USAF. That’s a great way to look at obedience as guidance and not as a complete absolute, for when people do things without thought people will get hurt. The Milgram experiment is a showcase of what people will do if they do not have to take personal responsibility. Just because someone with all the trappings of authority and power tell us to do something does not mean what we are doing is right. The Milgram experiment showed psychologist that is wrong to subjugate test subjects without prior knowledge or consent. Furthermore, we now know that people are affected in both the short and long term from deception of testing, and some will never get over the fact that they were lied to.

Does everybody have the ability to do evil, or are we all naturally innocent and good? William Golding believed that we were all born with the ability to do evil. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a different view: he believed that at all of us are naturally innocent and it is our environment that leads us to do evil. Although Rousseau’s idea is true in some instances, Golding is right: It is human instinct to do what seems best for us, even if it means doing evil.

In the 1960’s psychologist Stanley Milgram set up what could be deemed as a controversial set of experiments. His goal was to see if he could determine how ordinary German citizens could have been a part of such atrocities committed against the Jewish people in World War II. Milgram also wondered if something like that could still take place in our modern society. The true motives of the experiment were not revealed to the participants until after the experiment was concluded (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry, 2014). The participants were recruited from the general-public. They were told the experiment was to determine how punishment influences learning and that they would be paid four dollars for participating in the experiment.

In the 1960 's, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor, conducted an experiment that sparked intense controversy throughout the nation. Milgram attempted to pinpoint evil in its rawest form: this was achieved by placing an ordinary person, called the "teacher", in a situation in which an instructor pressured the subject to shock another person, called the learner. Despite hearing the progressively agonizing screams of the learner, the teacher continued to comply with the directives given by the instructor, thereby selecting obedience over morality. While this experiment was revered and praised by many scientists and psychologists, it was also ridiculed by others. One psychologist that holds the Milgram experiment in extreme contempt is Diana Baumrind, a leading parenting phycologist. She expressed in her article, Review of Stanley Milgram 's Experiments on Obedience, that the experiment was administered by a detached and calculating man whom of which took pleasure in emotionally damaging his subjects. She provides the reader with an emotional perspective in regards to the Milgram experiments. Additionally, critical psychologist Ian Parker describes in his article, Obedience, not only the inhumanity of the experiment, but also the lack of scientific evidence that Milgram uses to support his experiment; in addition, Parker cites multiple sources that support his claims against this incredible experiment. His critique also analytically depicts the repercussions Milgram faced

So, in the case of Milgram's experiment participants were randomly picked, told about the experiment being about a learning memory before entering the study area and, all teachers picked were encouraged by the experimenter to continue regardless of the shocks given to the learner (Great thinkers: Human, all too human, 2011). Because participants were volunteers and were not forced to continue (some left the experiment) and the pre-recorded screams mislead teachers as learners never received painful shocks there was no the violation of ethics. Although some participants may have held some psychological contempt for his/her actions, the manipulation of the study indicates that malicious behavior separates from self-intention as people acted within the social constraints.

In the video , Psychologist Milgram experimented on human behavior and their obedience to authority. Showing examples of regular, everyday civilians,volunteering to take an experiment on whether they would get questions right or wrong. With this type of experiment comes consequences where they would be shocked by a "shock generator" which elevates in voltage the more answers that are answered wrong,the higher the voltage goes. In the experiment Milgram wanted to prove that humans will suffer pain behind their belief of the level of authority that an individual upholds. Knowing each question that they may answer could possibly become wrong,the consciously continue in the state of conflict of whether they should proceed on with the experiment or stop. Also, not only does the volunteers continue to take on the abuse of this experiment but their was some Psychologist that continued with the experiment,even when it became dangerous. One man in the video expressed that he has a heart condition,yet and stillcontinued to go on with the experiment and the Psycholist agreed,without any hesitations for health of this older male gentleman.

Milgram’s experiment was an experiment that tested whether people would people would administer shock to another person even though the person receiving the shock would refuse to participate. During the experiment, Milgram would have the subject be the teacher and the other person people the student. While Milgram believed the experiment produced great results, a lady named Diana Baumrind believed the experiment should have not been conducted at all. Baumrind believed that Milgram’s experiment was not the best experiment because it still needed somethings to be worked out before conducting. There were many things in Milgram’s experiment that raised some red flags. In discussion of Milgram’s experiment, many of

The Milgram Experiment does not account for indoctrination or the lives of the people who underwent it. They do not have enough information about the people who did the experiment to know whether or not the volunteers were biased to one point of view. A person would have other motivations than trying to just follow the orders of authority. The experiment does not explain any problems in the world because it does not address the motivations of the people who did the experiment or those who do bad things.(McLeod, S. A.,

The results discovered in psychological experiments such as Milgram’s outweigh the negativity of the responses from test subjects. Milgram’s results brought a deeper insight to humans and their interactions with authority and provided a possible explanation to the Nazis’ responses in the Nuremberg trials. Psychological sciences simply cannot advance if consent forms become restrictive to the point that everything is revealed to the student before the experiment has started. Specifically, informing teachers that they were not administering real electric shocks to the learner would make the teachers not take the experiment seriously and/or provide disingenuous reactions to the learner’s cries of pain.

One exquisite example of this shedding of responsibility would be the Milgram experiment. The Scientist who served in the role of the leader continually barked down orders on the group member (volunteer) to administer increasing levels of shock to another man. The shocks of course were fake, and responses were set on a pre-recorded machine. The study found that an abundantly high number of the volunteers followed the orders of the scientist, Even though in many cases what they were doing violated their own sense of ego ideal. This study was done in order to help understand why the Nazi war criminals committed such atrocities.

Yes, the Milgram Experiment changed my opinion on free will greatly. I used to believe that free will meant that people had complete control over their own actions and decisions. I thought it meant that a person could decide what they thought was right or wrong and base their decisions. However after observing this experiment I have begun to believe that there really is no true free will instead our decisions and actions our controlled by powerful figures and people other than ourselves. People believe what is right and wrong based on what authorities say. This caused me to understand that authority people a very big role in our lives. One example being people have to obey laws. And if we break these laws we are doing something believed