Compare And Contrast Milgram's Experiment And Zimbardo

In this article two experiments were mentioned; the Milgram's Experiment and the Stanford Experiment supporting that “people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be”. However, recently, the consensus of the two experiments had been challenged by the work of social identity theorizing. The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Zimbardo. This experiment included a group of students who were “randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners”. It was conducted in a mock prison at the Stanford Psychology Department. Prisoners were abused, humiliated, and undergone psychological torture. In the experiment the guards played a very authoritarian

role and abused the prisoners brutally to the point where six days later the study had been terminated. Zimbardo concluded that “people descend in tyranny” because they act upon what is told of them to do by authorities unthinkingly even if they are toxic roles.

For the guards “brutality was a “natural” consequence of being in the uniform of a ‘guard’ and asserting the power inherent in that role”.The Milgram Experiment took place in 1961. It was members of the “general public” mostly men who volunteered to take part in the study. This scientific study was a “study of the memory”. In this experiment there were two roles administered. The two roles being; the “Teacher” and the “Learner”. The role of the Teacher was to administer “shocks of increasing magnitude (from 15 V to 450 V in 15-V increments) to another man (the ‘‘Learner’’) every time he failed to recall the correct word in a previously learned pair”. Without the knowledge of the teacher, the Learner was “Milgram's confederate, and the shocks were not real”. Also rather than being more interested in the memory like the study specified, Milgram was more engrossed upon how far men would actually go to carry out the task. At the end of the experiment it was to him and others shock that, “the answer was very far”. By very far it was proved that the Teachers were “willing to administer shocks of 300 v and 65% went all the way

450”
Psychology was dominated by the concept of tyranny in the 1960s as well as the 1970s. The two experiments; Milgram's experiment and the Stanford Experiment were conducted because they wanted to research about the “obedience to authority”. It was to explain the behavior of dominance and submission between people. The popular thought of the banality of evil was supported by the research taken to show that people follow what is told of them both passively, and unthinkingly, to the instructions told and positions that authorities may provide, regardless of how malicious the task may be. The “obedience of authority” idea is challenged by the “social identity theorizing”. Essentially people will fall into obedience of authorities as long as they believe that the authority is right, the obedience is conditional.
Recently the consensus of the two experiments had been challenged by the work of social identity theorizing because Milgram and Zimbardo connected their consensus to banality of evil, with real life situations being the holocaust, for an example they connected to Adolf Eichmann, who was a chief architect of the Nazis by suggesting that Eichmann was no psychopathic monster but was “instead a diligent and efficient bureaucrat—a man more concerned with following orders than with asking deep questions about their morality or consequence.

This had been contradicted because Eichmann had an exceptional understanding of what his superiors were doing and took pride in what he did. The reason why this has also been contradicted is because the roles in order for what Eichmann had to do were very vague which meant that if Eichmann had wanted to bring success to the Nazi cause, “creativity and imagination were required.” Details of the final solution were not handed out to Eichmann but Eichmann had to explain it himself causing him to stand up and confront his superiors when he believed that they were not as willing to the eliminationist Nazi principles. While it was proven in other experiments another eye catching time it was proven that “individuals’ willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right” was in Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. What was contradicted in his experiment

was that even though he had not given any specific orders to the guards on what to do he did give them a general sense about what they should do and what's expected of them. He had done so by saying “You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me… We’re going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness’’. This contradicted his experiment because his assertion, ‘‘behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles of prisoner and guard [were] the sole source of guidance’. However, that was not the case because the guards already knew how to behave with the prisoners instead of just acting upon their behavior. This eventually leads to the questioning of ‘‘behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles of prisoner and guard [were] the sole source of guidance.” However, even though the guards were told how to act not all of them acted in the way they were meant to with the guidance given. Infact, one of the prisoners even confronted the guards saying if he was a guard he would not have been such a masterpiece.
Another experiment, the BBC prison study, was what first raised plausibility of the banality of evil thesis. It was very similar to the Stanford study in the aspect of assignment of roles from the general public into the experiment, only this time it was guards and prisoners. The study found three main points, the first one was that the volunteers did that conform to their roles automatically. Secondly was that they only acted when they were within a group to the extent where they even identified with the group. Third, identifying with a certain group did not automatically mean that they accepted their role. In contrast it strengthens them to unite and resist. In the early stages of the study the identification within a group sought a more united approach to resist the guards. As the study went further on there was a forming of hierarchy within the groups and with creative leadership, and a strong following for those who believe in their leader. The behavior shown in the study is very similar if not like the Nazi tyranny. Within the Nazi system was a hierarchy much like the groups of prisoners within the experiment. Like the Nazi system people know what they are doing and they only agree to do what the authoritarians say if they feel it is right.
From this I learned the different experiments conducted being the Milgram’s Experiment, The Stanford Prison, and the BBC Experiment to prove different consensus. I learned that the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiment were made to prove that people do whatever authoritarians tell them to do, no matter how malevolent it may be. I also learned that this conclusion conducted from the two experiments can be contradicted because when its consensus was related to a real event it was proven wrong. Through which in the end it was proved that it is an individual's choice to follow what the authoritarian says is based off their belief of whether or not they believe what the authoritarian is doing is right.
I do agree that “individuals’ willingness to follow authorities is conditional on identification with the authority in question and an associated belief that the authority is right” because while it was proved in both of the experiments. In the Stanford experiment, even though the guards were told how they were expected to act they were mostly acting upon the prisoners and not because of what the authorities told them to enact upon. I also agree because when related to events like in the holocaust. Eichmann was an example that proved that he was not just going by what his superiors told him to do, but because he believed they were doing the right thing for the Nazi cause to advance and when he felt that they weren’t, he resisted. The only part I disagree in with the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiment, is how the volunteers were treated. I believe it is unethical and essentially inhumane to use people the way they were treated, they are scarred, abused, both mentally and physically, and some have even reported to have depressional issues after the studies. Even though, they may have voluntarily sought to be apart of the experiments, the conductors of the studies should have seeked an alternative path prior to the experiment commencing. That way the volunteers aren’t as intensely affected afterwards in the same regards to the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.
In conclusion to ‘‘Nature’’ Of Conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s Studies Really Show”, the projections and predictions of the outcome from the experiments were not anticipated from what the results actually showed. The Milgram and Zimbardo studies concluded that an individual will fall into obedience from an authority as long as the one under submission believes that the superior is right.