The Milgram Experiment The Milgram experiment is a very well-known and talked about experiment that looks that people’s obedience to authority. I found the Milgram experiment to be very interesting and fascinating even though there are some ethical issues with the experiment. I believe this experiment tells us a lot about ourselves and our society and can give us very important information about ourselves, like why we do what we do in certain situations. And I believe if psychologists and sociologists were allowed to do these type experiments we would know a lot more about people and our society. Jerry M. Burger tried to replicate the Milgram experiment in his own study and was able to come up with results similar to Milgram’s. Burger tried
This part talked about how the incremental nature of the task, which was how the participants started at the lowest voltage and proceeded in 15-volt increments up the shock generators range. It is said that this small increment nature of the task lead the experiment to have higher rates of obedience because it makes it difficult for the participants to refuse to press on the 95-volt switch after just pressing the 80-volt switch. I found this to be the least convincing reason why high rates of obedience was found in the experiment. I believe this increment style does not play as big of a role as Burger describes it and has the least effect out of the other that of all for the reasons Burger gives. With being in the position that the participants are in I find it hard to say that the reason they are being obedient to authority is the small increment of voltage in between the
These experiments have given us so much information about ourselves and our society. Which gives us so much important information about why we do what we do. I found burgers four reasons why there was a high rate of obedience in the experiment to go along with my own beliefs and ideas which are why found them so interesting and correct. These experiments tell us one of the reasons how one of the worst things in history happened in that of the Holocaust. Which is why I believe experiments like these two still should be allowed. I think that if we were able to keep doing these experiments that we would have much more information and knowledge about psychology and sociology. If we truly do want to know more about these subjects then we need to realize that we have to do these types of experiments and accept the risks and just do these type of
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
This gives proof to the belief that many people obey authority to show they are doing a good job, and perceived as loyal by the experimenter or society, which ever the case may be. One theory used to explain this experiment, is one of hidden aggression. According to this concept, people suppress aggressive behavior, and the experiment allows them to express this anger. Therefore when an individual is placed in a situation where he has control over another individual, whom he is able to punish repeatedly, all demented and hidden anger will be revealed.
In her excerpt, Baumrind discusses the potential dangers of the aftereffects on the participants of the experiment. On many occasions she suggests that these people are subjects of a cruel and unethical experiment, and suffer from harm to their self-image and emotional disruption (227). She also calls Milgram’s experiment a “game” (Baumrind 225); this illustrates her negative outtake on the experiment which is seen throughout the article. On the contrary, Parker discusses the aftereffects on Milgram himself. He expresses how the experiment, although it shows light to what extent of obedience a person may travel, ruined Milgram’s reputation. Parker also cites many notable authors and psychologists and their reactions to Milgram’s experiment. Despite their differences, Baumrind and Parker are able to find common ground on a few issues concerning the Milgr...
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
...at the expense of the brutally murdered test subjects. I have only highlighted a couple of experiments that they conducted that the data collected from these could be extremely helpful to the humankind. Instead of calling it all bad we can find some good that can be salvaged from the victim’s ashes.
However, all of the participants continued to administer up to three-hundred volts. These were everyday “normal” people that functioned successfully in society. Slater had the opportunity to interview one of the participants of Milgram’s experiment, one which happened to follow through with the shocks all the way to the very last one. During the interview the participant stated, “You thought you were really giving shocks, and nothing can take away from you the knowledge of how you acted” (Slater, 59). These words came from the mouth of an “average joe” that never knew what he was capable of before the experiment. With these words, we are reminded that we are not as “nice” as we’d like to think we
In Milgrim’s experiment Milgrim was really looking at the “obedience to authority” of his participants. He was some friend actors pretend they were getting shocked at an increasing rate and to beg for the “teacher” to stop shocking them. Milgrim was trying to see how far the participants would shock the “students” while an experimenter was in the room telling them to continue shocking. He expected as the students had said that they would stop after 200 or 300 volts before they refused to shock any more.
In finding that people are not naturally aggressive. Milgram now alters the experiment to find out why do people act the way they do. He compiled the experiment to answer, why do people obey authority, even when the actions are against their own morals.
At first Milgram believed that the idea of obedience under Hitler during the Third Reich was appalling. He was not satisfied believing that all humans were like this. Instead, he sought to prove that the obedience was in the German gene pool, not the human one. To test this, Milgram staged an artificial laboratory "dungeon" in which ordinary citizens, whom he hired at $4.50 for the experiment, would come down and be required to deliver an electric shock of increasing intensity to another individual for failing to answer a preset list of questions. Meyer describes the object of the experiment "is to find the shock level at which you disobey the experimenter and refuse to pull the switch" (Meyer 241). Here, the author is paving the way into your mind by introducing the idea of reluctance and doubt within the reader. By this point in the essay, one is probably thinking to themselves, "Not me. I wouldn't pull the switch even once." In actuality, the results of the experiment contradict this forerunning belief.
The teachers would initiate a “shock” to the student every time they got an answer wrong, but the teachers were unaware that the shock was fake. As the experiment continued, the shocks became more severe, and the students would plead for the teacher to stop since they were in pain. Despite the fact, that the participants continuously asked the authoritative experimenter if they could stop, “...relatively few people [had] the resources needed to resist authority” (Cherry 5). The participants feared questioning the effectiveness of the experiment, or restraining from continuing in fear of losing their job, going to jail, or getting reprimanded by Yale. A majority of the participants were intimidated by the experimenter, hence why they continued to shock the students, even though they knew morally, it was incorrect what they were doing. This experiment concluded, “...situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience...” (5). One's decisions are based on the situation they are facing. If someone is under pressure, they will resort to illogical decision making. There thoughts could potentially be altered due to fear, or hostility. In conclusion, the rash, incohesive state of mind, provoked by fear will eventually lead to the rise of
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
He believes the scientific advancements from Milgram’s experiment outweigh the temporary emotional harm to the volunteers of Milgram’s experiment. Also Herrnstein points out that Milgram’s experiment was created to show how easily humans are deceived and manipulated even when they do not realize the pain they are causing. We live in a society and culture where disobedience is more popular than obedience; however, he believed the experiment was very important and more experiments should be done like it, to gain more useful information. The experiment simply would not have been successful if they subjects knew what was actually going to happen, Herrnstein claims. He believes the subject had to be manipulated for the experiment to be successful. “A small temporary loss of a few peoples privacy seems a bearable price for a large reduction in
The Milgram Experiment was biased and had many factors and variations that affected the outcome of his data. His experiment dealt with only male participants and so the data is not really able to represent how female participants would react. The American population is not able to be represented as well because his participants were self-selected. His participants came from a newspaper advertisement, so those who were wealthy and educated had the chance to participate, where those who were not wealthy and could not read, were not able to participate (Saltzman, 2000).
...to find out something when they use children. The Tuskegee experiment exhibit how cruel researcher can also be, and how racial society was in 1932. The experiments show what can happen without regulations. There should be values and regulations to guide research in these experiments. Concluding, some experiments have the tendency to destroy the lives of the humans that have been experimented on.