The Perils Of Obedience Stanley Milgram Analysis

David’s claim that the Holocaust occurred because the Germans became unusually cruel is false based on the fundamental attribution error and Milgram’s experiments. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute other people’s behavior to internal factors, instead of accounting for situational factors. David committed this error when stating that Germans, as a whole, were “sadistic people with abnormal and twisted personalities”. David did not account for the immense pressure that the German public felt from Hitler during World War II. Although many atrocities were being committed, the Germans feared for their lives if they stood up for the Jews and disobeyed Hitler’s rule. David would be correct if he said that some Germans became systematically cruel, but the fundamental attribution error is introduced when David says that all Germans became systematically cruel.

Milgram's experiment is about how people have blind obedience to authority it also called a shock experiment. His Experiment was created to explain some of the concentration camp horrors of the World War 2, where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and other enemies of the state were slaughtered by Nazis. In the holocaust, jews people were tortured because Hitler told their people to torture Jewish people, so people were following this world blindly without knowing why they are doing that. Many people claim that they were just following the orders, and could not hold to be responsible for their action.

He received a bachelor’s in political science from Queens College and received a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University. Milgram worked as a research assistant to Solomon Asch and was influence by Ashs’ conformity experiment. In 1961 he began to conduct the obedience experiment. He wondered how far person would go when ordered by an authority figure to hurt another person even if it was against their beliefs. The participant, also known as the “teacher” , had to administer shocks to the “learner” each time the learner was wrong as well as increase the shock voltage. The shock machine had increasing voltages , the third button on the machine labeled as Danger: Severe shock and the last feature three x’s. This lead the teacher to believe that they were administering high voltages of pain when in all actuality the learner was an actor. Milgram concluded that 65% of the participants continued with the experiment until the very

At Yale University, Stanley Milgram a psychologist carried out the most famous study of obedience in psychology. The experiment was focused on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal ethics. In 1963, Milgram was interested in researching how far a person would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Milgram was interested to see how an individual could be influenced by committing murders, for instance the Germans in World War II. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were obedient to their superiors as that was the common explanation for assassinations in the Nazi in World War II. At Yale University, Milgram selected participants by placing an announcement that was printed in the newspaper highlighting the male participants to take part in the study of learning.

As this report has highlighted the research is not without controversy with many questioning to what extent Milgram’s experiment is true to real life and has been criticized for not highlighting further situational variables in determining obedience to authority.

Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.

Why do people follow orders or directions given by authority figures? People tend to obey orders from people they recognize as a higher authority pose a threat to their safety.This can occur in many places and situations like families, work, and even school. This was put to test when Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in 1963. The author notes, “Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person,” (Mcleod 1). This experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and experimenter. Participants were 40 males aging between 20 and 50 whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. These regular men were assigned to either an electric chair or the controller of the chair.

“The Perils of Obedience”, written by Stanley Milgram in 1973, explores how her experiment demonstrated people’s affinity to obey orders even if it means someone will get hurt. Milgram is a leading social psychologist who disproved previously considered notions about obedience and authority. Her work demonstrates how obedience trumps morality and gives support for this phenomena with examples from history. By using different participants’ reactions, the author is able to analyze the meaning behind the experiment.

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.

Speaking of one of the most renowned psychological experiment, which even replications on TV are done, is the Milgram experiment, on obedience to authority figures. It involves the measurement of how much participants will to obey the authority, in order to explain the reason why soldiers obeyed to allow the Holocaust, the homicides of millions of Jews, happened. With the participants’ roles as a teacher to punish a learner by incrementing degrees of electric shocks, though they didn’t know it’s staged, 65% of them did it to the last under the horrendous moans and the commands of the experimenters, which surpassed the expectation of 1.2%. Milgram himself elaborated two theories, encompassing theory of

In the book, Opening Skinner’s Box, by Lauren Slater is a really interesting, mind boggling book. In chapter 2, Obscura, talks about this Yale assistant professor named Stanley Milgram who decides to conduct an experiment on obedience to authority. Milgram himself seemed to have a strong appealing and curiosity to the way people behaved and acted. Stanley loved to experiment on the way humans adapt and react to such situations. He would point up at the sky for no reason, and timed how long it took a huge group of people to look up at nothing happening. He also would write letters, and address them and would drop them on the sidewalk, and would see who would come pick them up, and mail them (Slater, 43). He had a keen sense on human behaviors,

However, it does show the power of situation on people’s behavior and decision-making. The people chosen for the experiment were regular students. They were assigned to their roles randomly – the prisoners had not done anything ‘wrong’ and the guards had not earned their position of authority. 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’.

Deception from a moral viewpoint would be something that is seen as wrong, but in a study or experiment for research I think deception is something that is necessary to gain certain knowledge that we wouldn 't be able to gain using regular methods. Usually, the ends justify the means to a deceptive experiments and they usually have good intentions behind them. Many people may be angry after the experiment is over but it is shown that people enjoy an experiment with deception more than an experiment without deception; and people also benefit from them more, educationally. I believe deception is a necessary tool for learning about human behavior and human reaction.

The Stanley Milgram Experiment is a famous study about obedience in psychology which has been carried out by a Psychologist at the Yale University named, Stanley Milgram. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. In July 1961 the experiment was started for researching that how long a person can harm another person by obeying an instructor.

Agency theory says that people “will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.” This idea is reinforced by some characteristics of Milgram’s evidence in his