The Power of Situation in The Milgram Experiment

1779 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of milgram's obedience study

The power that a situation can have on a person is simply incredible. This power of situation and obedience go hand in hand, people get caught up in a situation because of the obedience they were taught as children. In society obedience is the key, allowing things to run smoothly and helps to prevent chaos. But in some instances that obedience can over take and cause a person to do things that they normally wouldn’t; whether it be following orders to an extreme extent or even doing things that people would consider to be inhumane. This has been shown many times in social psychology throughout history. The Milgram Experiment attempted to prove that in a situation that a person who feel trapped could even kill a person; the Stanford Prison Experiment showed society that a person can fall into a specific role they never been in, even if the participants knew what was going on in the experiment; lastly there is the Lucifer Effect which explains how good people turn bad . These instances and explanations help prove that the power of a situation can change a person.

The Milgram Experiment, performed by Stanley Milgram was a series of experiments to see if put in the situation would a subject kill an unknown participant if told to by an authoritative figure.. Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and an actor pretending to be a volunteer. These people fill three specific roles: the Experimenter, the authoritative role, the Teacher, a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter, and the Learner, the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher. The subject and the actor both drew slips of paper to determine who played what role, but unknown to the subject, both sl...

... middle of paper ...

...use a person to do things that they normally wouldn’t; whether it be following orders to an extreme extent or even doing things that people would consider to be inhumane because of an ideal they have. This has been shown in social psychology throughout numerously history. The Milgram Experiment attempted to prove that in a situation that a person who feel trapped could even kill a person; the Lucifer Effect tries to explain how god people can do bad things when put in the situation using the Stanford Prison Experiment showed society that a person can become a certain type of person, even if the participants knew what was going on in the experiment. After seeing these experiments and understanding the Lucifer Effect it’s much easier to take a step back and try and understand what kind of a situation a person was in before jumping to conclusions about their actions.

Show More
Related

  • A Summary of "The Perils of Obedience"

    525 Words  | 2 Pages

    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. The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher is the real subject and the learner is merely an actor.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Perils Of Obedience By Stanley Milgram

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his article, he provides excerpts from his experiment to solidify his concepts. For example, Gretchen Brandt continuously askes if the "Student" is ok; however, when the "Experimenter" says to continue, she does so but not without saying she "...doesn 't want to be responsible for anything happening to him" (80). Another example Milgram provides is of a man by the name Fred Prozi. Prozi proceeds through the entire experiment. That is, until he runs out of word pairs. At this point the "Experimenter" urges him to continue. Prozi refuses; yet, when the experimenter claims the responsibility is his and his alone, Prozi continues still full of concern (83). Szegedy-Maszak calls this "routinization", one person having responsibility for one job (76). In Milgram 's case the job was having the responsibility for all outcomes, and urging the "Student" to continue. In response to Milgram 's experiment and others, Saul McLeod, psychology tutor at University of Manchester, writes that the person being ordered around believes the authority will accept the responsibility of the end results. He calls this the "agentic state", when people allow others to push them around and direct all responsibility on to them; therefore, acting as agents for the other person (The Milgram Experiment).

    Read More

  • Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience, by Diana Baumrind and Obedience, by Ian Parker

    890 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.

    Read More

  • The Perils of Obedience, by Stanley Milgram

    1490 Words  | 3 Pages

    He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority figures. Milgram is well aware of his audience and organization throughout his article, uses quotes directly from his experiment and connects his research with real world examples to make his article as effective as possible. Stanley Milgram selected 40 college participants, aged 20-50, to take part in the experiment at Yale University. Milgram says, “The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measureable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim” (632). Although the 40 men or women thought that they were in a drawing to see who would be the “teacher” and the “learner,” the drawing was fixed.

    Read More

  • The Stanford Prison Experiment And Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect

    1768 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Our young research participants were not the proverbial “Bad Apples” in an otherwise good barrel. Rather, out experimental design ensured that they were initially good apples and were corrupted by the insidious power of the bad barrel, this prison (229).” Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect, created an experiment of twenty-four college age men. He randomly assigned these ordinary, educated, young men with a role as either Guard or Prisoner. He questions whether or not good people will do bad things if they are given the opportunity. After the experiment is complete, he begins to compare the situations that occurred in the Stanford Prison Experiment with real life situations in Abu Giraib and Guantanamo Bay Prison. He points out many similarities that parallel the Stanford Prison Experiment. In every situation depicted, there is a good person in a seemingly “bad barrel” – or a bad situation that brings bad actions out of a good person.

    Read More

  • Milgram and Zimbardo: Overpowering Situations

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Milgram’s experiment started shortly after the trial of Adolf Eichmann began. Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi who tortured many Jews during the Holocaust, and had others under his hand do whatever he told them to do. Milgram decided to plan a study to merely see if the followers of E...

    Read More

  • Exploring Social Influence and the Experiments that Attempt to Explain Social Influence

    2031 Words  | 5 Pages

    We live in a society where each individual has their own set of thoughts and beliefs. Occasionally one will modify their beliefs and behavior to coincide with a group. This is an example of social influence. Social influence has three main components; conformity, compliance and obedience. The concept of compliance is similar to conformity, however there is a slight difference. Compliance only requires a person to perform a task. The person does not have to agree or disagree with the assignment, just simply complete it. Conformity requires the person being influenced to change their attitudes and or beliefs. An example of this aspect of social psychology is the holocaust in World War II. Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi officer responsible for filling up death camps in Germany. After the war he went on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. On May 31, 1962, he was sentenced to death for the horrible crimes he committed. His defense was "Why me? Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to round up the Jews for the death camps. Why not hang them for not wanting to be shot? Why me? Everybody killed the Jews". A few months after the start of Eichmann’s trial, Stanley Milgram instituted an experiment testing ones obedience to authority. He wanted to find out if good people could do atrocious things if they were just obeying authority. Was Eichmann and millions of others in Nazi Germany decent people who were just following orders? Some other famous experiments that have taken place to test the waters of social psychology are Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, all ...

    Read More

  • Perils Of Obedience

    366 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Article If Hitler Asked You To Electrocute A Stranger, Would You? Probably

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Fear In Lord Of The Flies Quote Analysis

    464 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience By Diana Baaumrind

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    Obedience is when you do something you have been asked or ordered to do by someone in authority. As little kids we are taught to follow the rules of authority, weather it is a positive or negative effect. Stanley Milgram, the author of “The perils of Obedience” writes his experiment about how people follow the direction of an authority figure, and how it could be a threat. On the other hand Diana Baumrind article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience,” is about how Milgram’s experiment was inhumane and how it is not valid. While both authors address how people obey an authority figure, Milgram focuses more on how his experiment was successful while Baumrind seems more concerned more with how Milgram’s experiment was flawed and

    Read More

  • Just Do What the Pilot Tells You

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dalrymple states that he obeyed his superior because she was more knowledgeable over her job (256). The Milgram experiment demonstrates how ordinary people act towards authority in certain situations. Dalrymple accurately utilizes that point by describing when a boy is turned in for trying to steal a car and then the parents proceed to yell at the guards. The guards began to stop reporting kids because they wanted to avoid the conflict all together (257). Parker agrees with Dalrymple by explicating that the experimenter alludes to conflict when the teacher wants to discontinue the experiment, but stumbles to rebel when dictated to continue (238). Parker’s solution is to offer a button for the teachers to press when they are no longer able to continue the experiment (238).

    Read More

  • Asch And Milgram's Experiment Essay

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    Asch and Milgram’s experiment was unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the details of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress, Asch and Milgram’s replicated the reality of life. In “Options and Social Pressure” Solomon E. Asch conducts an experiment to show the power of social influence, by using the lengths of sticks that the participants had to match up with the best fit, Asch then developed different scenarios to see how great the power of influence is, but what he discovered is that people always conformed to the majority regardless of how big or small the error was the individual always gave in to the power of the majority.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Perils Of Obedience Stanley Milgram

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Blindly Obeying Authority

    1789 Words  | 4 Pages

    Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.

    Read More

More about The Power of Situation in The Milgram Experiment

Open Document