The Milgram Shock Experiment Essay

Consistent with Rossel, Germany has had a past of anti-Semitism, starting in 1542 when the great German Protestant leader Martin Luther wrote a booklet called Against the Jews and Their Lies. Even earlier the Catholic Churches had taught that the Jewish people killed Crist and should therefore be hated (10). Early teachings of anti-Semitism lead to a hating of the Jewish community, but with the German’s calling themselves the “Aryan Race” and the Jewish people calling themselves the “chosen one’s” there was bound to be competition on who was superior.

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

Hell bent on creating a perfect “Aryan” race, Hitler used propaganda and lies to work his way into the government and into peoples minds. He and the Nazi party were weapons of mass destruction, killing anyone in their path. The Jews, above all, were Hitler’s main choice of prey. He blamed the Jews for all his failures and the failures of Germany and convinced others of the same thing. And the Jews knew this. The people in concentration camps were always asking themselves if God was real, whether they were going to eat that night, and how long they were going to be stuck in hell. In a time where the Jews were questioning everything about the world, Hitler was the only constant. Wiesel expresses this by writing “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone had kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (81). God had failed them and put them in hell with their friends and family were dying around them. No matter what they did, the Jews knew that whatever Hitler said he would do he’d follow

Germans in the beginning of the Nazi era were campaigning to eliminate any signs of Jewish intellectualism or anti-socialist ideas within the public. This is eminent when the author states in the article “Book Burning” that, “German govt was trying to create support for the Nazi cause, by driving in the nazi ideas in social and cultural groups”(Book Burning, Holocaust

The Jews weren’t always liked, and they never had a place to call home, being spread out all across Europe. However Hitler took things to another level, blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in WWI and its following economic depression and. It is unknown why he chose the Jews as scapegoats, or whether he actually even believed the Jews were responsible, but all he saw at the time was Jews living in prosperity while Germans were suffering. Hitler’s hate made him feel like he had to exterminate all the Jews in Europe, so in his memoir “Mein Kampf”, Hitler wrote down how he planned to kill all the Jews. However the Jews then didn’t believe one man would be willing to go this far for no certain reason.

With all of the false stereotypes being relayed to the people, hate towards the Jews became normal. Kurt Mobius, a German police officer working at a concentration camp in Poland, said, “I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminal and subhumans” (Marcovitz 18). The constant anti-Semitic distortion made it easy for

For thousands of years, the Jewish People have endured negative stereotypes such as the "insects of humanity." As Sander Gilman pointed out, the Nazi Party labeled Jews as "insects like lice and cockroaches, that generate general disgust among all humanity" (Gilman 80).1 These derogative stereotypes, although championed by the Nazis, have their origins many centuries earlier and have appeared throughout Western culture for thousands of years. This fierce anti-Semitism specifically surfaced in Europe’s large cities in the early twentieth century, partially in conjunction with the growing tide of nationalism, patriotism, and xenophobia that sparked the First World

The Jews were not the only people persecuted and exterminated by Hitler and his regime... (Resnick p. 11) Gypsies, homo-sexuals, cripples, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, the terminally ill, and Communists would all fall victims to the hatred and brutality of the Nazis. However, the attributes that made them worthy for elimination, according to Hitler, were all

Have you ever heard of the quote, as said in The Jewish Secret to Overcoming Depression, “the Jews could be the cult of victimhood?” This quote was said because the Jews were victims in the German society. They were victims to oppression and discrimination. During the 40’s, there was a German man by the name Adolf Hitler. He was a Chancellor, dictator, and leader. He was Chancellor of Germany from the years 1933 to ‘45. Then a leader of Nazi Germany from the years of 1934 to ‘45. Also a dictator during the 1930’s. It is said that Hitler even initiated World War 2 during September of 1939, which was the

The estimates before Milgram’s experiment were in 2-3% of the subjects would be compliant, even to the point of administering a 450-volt shock to another person. The actual findings of the Milgram experiment being at 65% compliance came as a bit of a shock to everyone involved and to the rest of society. This demonstrates how for the most part, people think of themselves as autonomous, free thinking beings and view others in the same light. But due to the person-situation interaction, for the most part people will let the social influence of a given situation override their beliefs and characteristics (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry,

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.”

The Nazis and Hitler used extreme propaganda in attempt for people to accept their actions. Hitler made the Jews out to be a problem and a threat to the purity and perfection of German society (Holocaust Encyclopdia: Nazi Propaganda ). In Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in September, 1942, he states,

During World War II, anti-Semitic publications circulating throughout Germany display clear evidence of pervading the minds of young German children. Julius Steicher, editor of Der Stumer and the agent responsible for many of the anti-Semitic publications (Mills), helped dramatically initiate the German resistance toward Jews early on in a child’s life. It is important to understand the severity of anti-Semitism taught to the future Nazi generation in order to maintain the National Socialist state and further it’s agenda. By examining the ideas, and publications aimed towards children that express those ideals, it is clear that the National Socialist state wanted to indoctrinate a hateful, militant agenda into young children. Ultimately, the final result was to maintain the prejudice view that the Jewish people were the inferior race, and therefore the enemy for future generations.

Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis.

In class are shown the Milgram experiment which was an enforcer telling the teacher to shock the learner if the learner did not get what the learner was supposed to memorize exactly right the learner got shocked. In this study the learner was in no real harm because he was an actor but this experiment showed about 65% of people will kill someone if instructed to do so. Milgram was trying to understand why normal people in Germany would kill so many Jews. Milgram's results from this study show if people are instructed to do heinous acts 65% will go all the way. There is also another study called the Stanford prison study where they had normal people that were pertaining to be criminals and guards no real instructions were in place and we see from this experiment that people will push the limits and this is a great debate of good