An Experiment on Obedience in The Pearl´s of Obedience by Stanley Milgram

In this article “The Pearls of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram asserts that

obedience to authority is a common response for many people in

today’s society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals.

Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a

person’s tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or

destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a

learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an

overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of

punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the

experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is

responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner

for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock

panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts. The learner is actually an

actor who is strapped to a harmless electric chair. He is told several

pairs of words, and must remember and repeat these pairings with

the make-believe fear of being electrocuted for incorrect answers.

The foretold outcome or this experiment was expressed by

several people who are familiar with behavioral sciences. They

predicted that the majority of subjects would not pass 150 volts, and

that a few crazed lunatics would reach the maximum voltage. This

conclusion was disproved from Milgram’s experiment. The majority of

the subjects obeyed the experimenter to the end. There were several

reactions to the experiment. Some people showed signs of tension or

stress, others laughed, and some showed no signs of discomfort

throughout the experiment. Subjects often felt satisfaction by

obeying the experimenter. 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. This theory is put in

question, when a variation of Stanley Milgram’s original experiment is

described. This experiment enables the subject, not the

experimenter, to choose the level of shock for incorrect answers. The

results confirm that the majority of subjects did not pass the first loud

protest.

Stanley Milgram believes the most basic lesson of this

experiment is that common people with no particular aggression, will

carryout their jobs and become instruments of an evil operation.