The study measures the willingness of ordinary individuals to adhere to an authority figure who told them to commit acts on another individual which may conflict with their personal morals. The experiment found that 65% of the individuals completely obeyed the authority figure and made it through to inflict the final shock of 450 volts on another human being for an incorrect answer. These findings shocked me and led me to believe that it would have been entirely possible for a seemingly ordinary person such as myself to commit horrible acts against another person if I was instructed to do so. I sincerely hope that through being educated on such experiments and the holocaust itself, I would now have the strength to stand up for what I morally believe in and refuse any order outside of my
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
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
1. What rationale do the author(s) give for conducting the study? The author that is conducting this research is testing the obedience of a subject when dealing with “stocking a victim” by use of a shock generator. There are thirty levels of shock that are generated varying from a slight shock to a severe shock.
To What Extent Does the Milgram Experiment Explain Nazi Compliance? The word “Holocaust”, was a word meaning whole (“holos”) and burned (“kaustos”). In 1945, the word stood for the mass murder of about 6 million people; mainly European Jews as well as some homosexuals and Gypsies. The mass murder was committed by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War.
When the Milgram obedience experiments were being conducted the core of the experiments were all based on the false impression that an electrical shock would be administered to another individual at the push of a button with an incorrect answer, when in fact they weren’t. If the Milgram experiments were not based on lies and each participant did in fact administer a shock to another individual in response to a wrong answer, I feel that the results would have been the same with no alternative result. The reason for this would be because from the very beginning of the experiment the participants already believed that they would be actually administering an electrical shock. The participant’s reactions and concerns before, during and even after the experiments were all real with their true feelings and thoughts about their participation of either walking away from the experiment or completing the experiment. If the participants were to know that the electric shocks they were administering were not real, then the whole purpose of the experiment would have been useless and unnecessary.
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.
(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
On day six Zimbardo and Milgram decided to conclude the experiment. Zimbardo originally intended to explore how prisoners adapt to powerlessness, but he has contended that the experiment demonstrates how swiftly arbitrary assignment of power can lead to abuse. (Maher, The anatomy of obedience. P. 408) Once the experiment was completed Zimbardo and Milgram concluded that generally people will conform to the roles they are told to play.
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.
The Milgram experiment is an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram who was a psychologist at Yale University that focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. He would use an electric shock generator and the generator is mark from 15 volts which is slight shock to 375 volts which danger or severe shock to 450 volts which is beyond danger. As a result, people are likely to follow orders given by authority figure. I mention the Milgram experiment because the father in The Sellout wants his son to keep answering the questions despite that the narrator have to shock himself if he does not know
1) Stanley Milgram was one of the most influential social psychologists of his time, he was particularly fascinated by the dangers of group behavior and blind obedience to authority. His experiment became controversial, the results of the experiment were deeply revealing about the tensions between the individual and society. In 1962, Stanley Milgram impressed the world with his study on obedience. His theory was tested by an invention with a method that would become a window into human cruelty within. The purpose of the experiment was to understand the inconceivable, as the Germans might allow the extermination of the Jews.
Stanley Milgram is widely talked about in the psychology community, and even outside of it, he wished to look at obedience. He found an interest in authority and obedience because the horrific cases during World War II involving concentration camps. Jerry Burger wished to find out whether people still obey authority in 2006 like participants did in the Milgram study in 1963, 1965, and 1974. The final sample of participants consisted of 29 men and 41 women, ranging from age 20 to 81, with the mean age being 42.9 (Burger, 2009). The experiment was replicated with adjustments so that it would be ethical to carry out.
