Argumentative Essay On Milgram's Experiment

Christopher R. Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and The Final Solution in Poland is seen as one of the most influential book in Holocaust studies. The book traces the Reserve Police Battalion (hereafter RPB-101), a single German unit, throughout their military duty. These soldiers were instructed to kill innocent Jewish men, woman and children in Poland. Most of the men in the RPB-101 were originally deemed not suitable of conscription. When massacres in history occur, it is in the nature of human beings to think of the culprits as being different from normal people; savages or villains that kill for pleasure or have no remorse.

The student and teacher were placed in separate rooms and an instructor was placed in the same room as the teacher. He would then attempt to convince the teacher to continue the experiment even if the student starts crying out or wanting to leave. The teacher was required to “shock” the student if they said an incorrect answer. However, the ‘shocks’ became more intense and came with each incorrect answer. They eventually started getting very dangerous and potentially life threatening.

In the experiment, Milgram uses purposeful deception as the teacher is the naive subject and is told they are participating in a memory and learner psychology experiment and are in charge of delivering shocks to the learner, who, in fact, is an actor. The majority of the participants in the study were obedient to the experimenter even though the experimenter "did not threaten the subjects with punishments such as loss of income, community ostracism or jail for failure to obey. Neither could he offer incentives" (Milgram 651). Despite having nothing to gain, the subjects continued participating in the experiment. The participants continued to administer shocks to the student because they were instructed to

In Stanley Milgram’s “The perils of obedience” and Philip G. Zimbardo's “The Stanford Prison Experiment” the influence that authority holds is analyzed and tested in a variety of social experiments. Milgram asserts that any individual can excuse themselves from the responsibility of their role, regardless of how evil, on the grounds that there is someone ordering them to do so. However, Zimbardo claims that authority doesn’t have to be an individual, stating that anyone, be it a prison guard or a prisoner, will ultimately fill and perpetuate their assigned role as a result of authoritative factors and environments. However, the way in which both of the authors go to reaching these conclusions differs greatly.

His family was primarily made up of Jewish immigrants; he grew up learning what happened to his relatives in Europe and he was particularly intrigued by Hannah Arendt’s report on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram wondered whether her claims about “the banality of evil” – that evil acts can come from ordinary people following orders as they do their jobs – could be demonstrated in the lab (Blass, 2002). The Milgram Obedience Experiment then began in July 1961, the same month as Adolf Eichmann’s trial (Greenwood, 2018). The experiment contained 3 people, the experimenter, the teacher, and the

Joshua, a man involved in the experiment, ““I shocked. I feel bad about that. I shocked but I only went to 150, I broke it off at 150.” He keeps repeating this, as though to reassure himself….

The experiment will take place as planned and only stop if an emergency were to unexpectedly take place. If they decide to keep their names anonymous, subjects will be able to tell us and we will do so. Any questions subjects have will be made beforehand and answered, so no problems come up while the study takes place. If requested, tutors/parents of subjects will receive a copy of the rundown of the experiment and results, as well as recordings including their

In Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience As A Psychological And Moral Problem,” Fromm argues that most people don’t always obey their bosses, spouses, etc. He portrays that people that cannot obey, is a rebel and they feel that if they act out their anger, resentment on other people is the right thing to do; rather than obey and use the power of reason. In chronological order, he lists different examples like Adam & Eve and Prometheus; and how they handled the consequences after they disobeyed. After reading this article, I agree and disagree with the article, from personal experience with disobeying and obeying my bosses. People I have come across in my life state they feel that obeying a superior or spouse means that you are being a slave to what

The learner would be the person receiving electroshock from a machine ranging from 15 to 450 volts of electricity. The teacher was the person administering the dosage of electricity to the learner every time he would answer a question wrong. The test was rigged so that the learner would answer

He first took a poll on how his experiment would turn out. He asked residents of New Haven, Yale undergraduates, and a group of psychiatrists how they thought a group of people would behave in this situation he wanted to enact. They all told him the same answer, and predicted that every person who was to be involved in this experiment would not go all the way and shock someone all the way up to 450 volts (Slater, 40). He ended up with the result of 65% were obedient, and the other 35% were defiant. Why didn’t the 35% carry out the experiment?

Conformity Essay Rough Draft While reading books through an obedience lenses, readers search for which characters are compliant to a more powerful character, their reasoning, and how it impacts their actions and mindset. The focus book of this lens was 1984 by George Orwell, as Winston recognizes that almost all Party members are utterly loyal to the Party, yet attempts to rebel against the Party with the help of Julia and O’Brien, resulting in severe personal consequences. Rebellion shows disobedience that the Party works to revise through different forms of imprisonment and torture, leaving victims-like Winston and Julia-practically apathetic and emotionless. It is incredibly important to view books through an obedience lenses, particularly because of the relevance to society’s current state of affairs. By obeying authority figures because of fear of punishment, people can lose their sense of individuality and humanity, as evidenced by the characters in 1984.

Stanley Milgram 's "Behavioural Study of Obedience portrays the ideas that which the holocaust was carried out, the study showed how one person that was instructed by another a superior, infringe on the rights of a person. Stanley Milgram performed the experiment by allowing confederates to administer different levels of shock treatment to subjects who failed to answer correctly. Stanley Milgram(1963) wanted to identify to what extent would a person administer shock treatment to another in terms of being obedient ,although many of Milgram’ peers who analyzed his study on Obedience found that Milgram was unethical in his design of the study(Baumrind.1964). In the following essay I will attempt to explain whether the experiment was ethical.

The shock would increase in voltage, and would only be administered if, after hearing a series of words, the learner responded incorrectly to the question being asked. Eventually, some of the participants began to feel uneasy about the pain they were inflicting on the individual and insisted the experiment be discontinued. In spite of that, the scientist in the room urged that in order to be a successful study, the

Personally, if I were an experimenter in the study, I would go through a lengthy debriefing with the subject. First, I would inform the subject of the deception and of the necessity of it to carry out the research. I would make sure to inform the subject that he/she is not alone, in the sense that most of the subjects followed orders to the maximum voltage and all induced at least some shocks. Furthermore, I would not let the subject leave without reuniting with the learner to prove that the learner/confederate is perfectly safe. Finally, I would confirm with the subjects that they are mentally at peace with having participated in the study and make sure they forgive themselves for any harm they thought they

Voluminous research has been conducted in the area of obedience, more specifically how obedient individuals will be in obeying an authority figure even if the authority figure is commanding them to inflict harm or pain onto others. Ordinary people, for many years have inflicted pain onto others under the commands of an authority figure such as during the Holocaust. Probably, the most famous psychological piece of research investigating obedience was that of Milgram (1963). Milgram recruited ordinary males from different backgrounds and occupations, he then created a scenario where the participants were required to follow instructions from a perceived authority figure.