In, “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably” Phillip Meyer discusses Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment and the probability of normal people electrocuting a stranger. Milgram’s experiment was originally to show that Germans were different, which would explain the Nazis and the Holocaust. However, what he found was even more shocking. Milgram discovered that most people, not just Germans, are naturally very obedient. Both Milgram and Meyer were disgusted with the results that so many people would electrocute a stranger to the point of death, just because they were asked to. Meyers said that Milgram is no longer worried about the Nazis but is more worried about people like Meyers and normal people in America. Meyers also believes that people think that they would not go so far as many did in the experiment, but until they are put in that situation there is no way to tell what would happen. …show more content…
The experiment showed that humans are naturally obedient. Meyers makes a good point in that I believe I would never hurt someone just because I was told to, but in reality I really do not know what I would do. In this essay Meyers tone is very disgusted, and I tend to feel the same way. It is sickening to think that anyone would be so obedient that they would be willing to kill a complete stranger. It is very sad yet very true. People are very impressionable and will do whatever they are told if put in the right situation. Meyers also talk about how he worries about himself and his readers. He worries that if put in a similar situation that he would not know what he would do. I find myself in the same predicament. No one can know what they would do, but Milgram’s experiment, makes me lean towards the possibility that I would be more obedient than I would like to
In the book “Opening Skinner’s Box”, Lauren Slater discusses many complicated ideas relating to certain experiments of recent times. In every chapter, she focuses on one specific experiment and poses many controversial thoughts. One of the chapters I found most interesting was the second chapter titled “Obscura”. In it she walks readers through the experiments of Stanley Milgram and questions the purpose, results, usefulness, and morality of the experiments. To begin, the purpose of the experiments seem to be off to me.
Many of the teachers hesitated when the student responded to the shock with a grunt or a plea for help; however, some merely continued like nothing even happened. A Few Good Men displays the Milgram experiment throughout the entirety of the film. Not only with Jessup, but also with many of the soldiers views of leadership and lack of overall command. The fact that the soldiers answered to a leader as corrupt as Jessup, was a recipe for disaster in many people’s perspective. Jessup was a catalyst like gasoline to a fire.
This Milgram research on respect to authority figures was a series of cultural science experiments conducted by Yale University scientist Stanley Milgram in 1961. They assessed the willingness of survey participants, men from a different variety of jobs with varying degrees of training, to obey the authority figure who taught them to do acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to think that they were helping an unrelated research, in which they had to distribute electrical shocks to the individual. These fake electrical shocks gradually increased to grades that could have been deadly had they been true. McLeod's article about the Milgram experiment exposed the fact that a high percentage of ordinary people will
Stanley Milgram: The Perils of Obedience Stanley Milgram experiment is concerning peoples’ willingness to conform to an authority figure. The question Milgram was trying to answer was would a subject kill with electrical shock, due to an authority figure instructing them too. One individual was the learner being hooked up to electrodes, however, not literally.
Obedience is tested by how long the subject will continue to “shock the victim”. The point of this study is to determine if Americans are obedient even if they know the act is wrong. 2. What is/are the research questions and/or hypothesis/hypotheses? How obedient would subjects be to researchers when it comes to shocking a victim?
Throughout experiment 12-13, Milgram wondered if the person who gives the orders would change; would the amount of obedience increase? His results indicated that yes, the amount of obedience increased. In experiment 12, the learner demands to continue with the experiment. However, the experimenter told the subject to stop at 150 volts. 100% of the subjects obeyed the experimenter while discarding the learners plead to continue.
He saw that the more personal, or close, the real participant had to be to the fake one, while they were being shocked, affected the obedience as well. He also noticed that if there were two other fake participants teaching that refused to shock their learners that the real participant would not comply. Finally, he tested the experimenter telling the real patient to shock the learner by telephone, instead of actually being there in person, reduced obedience as well (McLead). The Milgram experiment and the Nuremburg trials can relate extensively to explain how the Holocaust happened the way it did.
Then, the participants were fully debriefed about the situation and how no physical harm was inflicted. Generally, “the obedience experiments produced a disturbing view of human behavior” (Blass, Print). The procedure heavily relied on the experimenter because the participant, upon instinct, chose to turn to them when in doubt or when showing nervousness. They were always commanded to continue the
(Russell 2014) Conclusion: Despite controversy Milgram’s experiment was ground breaking. It remains relevant today and is frequently cited in demonstrating the perils of obedience.
The Milgram experiment was an experiment that tested an individual's willingness to follow the instructions of an authority figure. Subjects were told to shock a person, who they believed to also be a subject, if they answered a question wrong. The people getting shocked were actors and were not actually receiving electrical shocks. Many of the subjects continued to give high voltage shocks because they were told to. This proves that in high-stress situations people are willingly listen to authority figures despite what the say to do.
During the 1960’s Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments to test how a person reacts to authority. He started these tests in response to World War Two and the reports of the German soldiers who claimed they were “just following orders’ when asked about
The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.
In the article of “The Perils of Obedience”, written by Stanley Milgram, the experimenter explains that the experiment is to see how far a person could hurt a victim in a situation where he is ordered to do so. Also, in the article “The Stanford Prison
However, the ethical decisions they made during the experiment were directly related to the roles they were assigned – the guards believed it was ‘right’ to punish and humiliate the prisoners because the prisoners were ‘bad’. As for the ethics of the experiment, Zimbardo said he believed the experiment was ethical before it began but unethical in hindsight because he and the others involved had no idea the experiment would spiral to the point of abuse that it did. The Stanford Prison Experiment reveals the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior.
This shows that people get caught up in emotions, because they believe that they must do what the crowd does, and start to act immorally. Indeed, it is wrong to punish victims, but as Hawkins had mentioned, people will deliberately cause