The Perils Of Obedience, By Lee Ross And Richard E.

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

Decisions are what direct a average person's life. Some decisions are easy some are hard. But that’s the way of life and how it works.

In the book “Opening Skinner’s Box,” written by Lauren Slater, there is a chapter dedicated to the social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, and his obedience to authority experiments. Milgram assembled one of the most malicious deceptions in the psychiatric field. He crafted what basically turned out to be an electric chair. To test his theory that obedience wasn’t in one’s personality but rather in the situation of the matter, Milgram gathered willing test subjects and instructed them to administer what they assumed were deadly shocks of electricity to another person who faked, pain and perhaps death (31). The experiment was set up with one test subject being a teacher and the actor being the learner, the “teacher’s” job was to administer shocks when the learner made a mistake in the pair of words read to him, increasing the voltage with every wrong answer.

Every action a person takes is the result of having thought about what it is they think they should do and then doing it. Life is riddled with problems that require solving. Decisions are complex matters that require careful judgment and problem analysis especially when one is in a role where others look up to them and are affected by their decisions.

Controversy in the ethics of the experiment comes from the deception used and psychological harm experienced by some of the participants. Milgram believed that for the

Milgram’s experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, an authority figure/experimenter, and a false shock generator. The subject of the experiment was the teacher. In the experiment, the teacher asks the learner a question and if they get it wrong, they received an electric shock. The shocks ranged from 15 volts to 450 volts. The learner was instructed to simulate noises of pain at certain level increments and eventually to just stop responding as if they were dead. One subject named Gretchen Brandt refused to continue the experiment once the generator reached

The Milgram experiment is one of the most controversial psychology experiments of the past century. I was familiar with it prior to accessing the simulation on the elearning site from an ABC television Four Corners episode on the nature of torture. So when I participated in the simulation, I stopped administering the shock at the first sign of distress from the subject at thirty watts. If I was in the actual Milgram experiment I would like to believe that I would have behaved in the same way. Human nature dictates that we believe that only abnormal people are capable of sinister behavior. This belief that internal attributions cause certain behaviours assures us of some stability and security in our day-to-day lives and yet the

The experimenter would show the participant along with a confederate a shock generator with voltages of 15v to 450v (30 switches in 15v increments). Participants were told this was connected to a chair in another room. They then drew lots to decide who would be the “teacher” in charge of shocks and who the “learner” receiving shocks (the outcome was rigged for the participant to be the teacher). The confederate was then strapped into the chair, and the participant was given a sample shock of 45v from the generator (the only real shocks given during the experiment) and the experiment would begin. Word pairs were read out which the teacher would ask questions on through an intercom. Wrong answers received a shock which increased with each incorrect response. If the participant reached 450v they would repeat that level twice before the experiment was concluded. Any questioning or refusal to continue was met with standard answers from the experimenter such as “although the shocks are painful, there is no permanent tissue damage” or “the experiment requires that you continue”.

“Saul McLeod.” The Milgram Experiment, Saul Mcleod, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html. American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx?item=3. There were a lot of things wrong with The Milgram Experiment that needed to be changed to meet the APA's Code of Conduct. First “Principle E: Respect for People's Rights and Dignity” that something Milgram Experiment didn’t have, again when the participant wanted to quit the scientist wanted to continue with the experiment not caring to see if the subject was alright or alive. Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, there were 30 switches on the shock generator, as a result, each time when the subject makes a mistake, increasing the level of electric shock that can easily harm them. If the participants refused to administer a shock or can’t continue they were giving prods to ensure they continued. My conclusion The Milgram Experiment is that I understand people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even though of harming an innocent human being. People tend to obey orders whatever they are told too and believe whoever is telling them what to

After each wrong question they were instructed to go higher on the voltage of shock. The learners would begin to scream and cry after so many shocks that high on the voltage so the teacher would look at the person in charge and the person would tell them to proceed on with the experiment. More then half of the subjects administered all thirty levels of shock. Milgram conclude that any of us would obey authority to harm

(Hart) Stanley Milgram’s experiment in the way people respond to obedience is one of the most important experiments ever administered. The goal of Milgram’s experiment was to find the desire of the participants to shock a learner in a controlled situation. When the volunteer would be ordered to shock the wrong answers of the victims, Milgram was truly judging and studying how people respond to authority. Milgram discovered something both troubling and awe inspiring about the human race. “Since they were first published in 1963, MIlgram’s sensational findings have been offered as an explanation for mass genocide during the Holocaust and events such as the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and the torture of prisoners in Abu

The Milgram experiment was a very famous study on obedience. The research was on everyday people and their compliance towards authority figures orders to inflict pain on others. Participants were instructed to give “fake” electric shocks to students, who are actually actors, learning memory tasks. They were instructed to give out electric shocks to the learners each time they gave a wrong response and would also move a level higher on the shock initiator each additional time an answer was incorrect. As the voltage level of these shocks increased, the students would pretend to cry out in pain, asking for it to stop. Some participants still increased shocks when this occurred, others hesitated and began asking questions. In our text it states

The voltage ranged from 15 to 450 volts, and ranged from Slight Shock to Danger: Severe Shock. The ‘victim’ was in fact a trained confederate of the experimenter, and the subject’s performance is based on how far he will go administering the ‘shocks’ to the victim. Unbeknown to the subject carrying out the

Milgram’s study was one meant to measure one’s level of obedience when being made to believe that the action they are being told to perform is causing harm to another person. The experimenters had the subjects come in to believe they were conducting a study on the effects of punishment on memory. The subjects were made to believe that they were randomly chosen between being a the “learner,” who received electric shocks, and the “teacher,” who delivered the electric shocks, however the experimenters rigged the draw so that all the learners were confederates in the study.

It has been said that decision making can be processed into focused attention to what may be a relevant aspect in how some decisions can be problematic and damaging to ones self esteem, finances, family life, social life, work life, and love life (Böhm & Pfister, 2008).