Compare And Contrast Milgram Study And Stanford Prison Experiment

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In both the Milgram Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment, people were subjected to two different types of “social pressure.” They both involved a random selection of participants who were tested on how far they would obey certain instructions, but the way the instructions were given and the atmosphere was different. During the Milgram study, two people were given different roles, a “teacher” and a “learner.” The teacher had to teach the learner a list of words and the learner had to repeat them back. If the learner got one incorrect, the teacher had to administer a small shock to them. After each shock, the teacher would flip different switches to increase the voltage. Before the study, Stanley Milgram asked participants how far they would go before they stopped the shocks and many of them answered that they would stop when the learner indicated they were in pain (Myers, p. 563). However, the results of the experiment were not in tune with the survey. Out of the several subjects, over sixty percent of males between the ages of twenty and fifty flip every switch. …show more content…

Philip Zimbardo was the head of the study and played the “prison warden” in the simulation. He split the volunteers into two groups, guards and prisoners. Zimbardo told the guards to enforce the rules, like in a real prison. For the first few days, the students went along with the experiment, some even though it was comical how the guards were being so serious. However, after a few days in the “prison”, the situation escalated to a whole new level. The guards began to be crueler to the prisoners and one by one, they broke down. After six days, Zimbardo ended the experiment (p.

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