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Criticisms of milgram's obedience experiment
Milgram's Experiments and the Perils of Obedience
Milgram's Experiments and the Perils of Obedience
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Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an American social clinician, best known for his questionable analysis on dutifulness led in the 1960s amid his residency at Yale. Milgram was impacted by the occasions of the Holocaust, particularly the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in building up the examination. In the wake of winning a Ph.D. in social brain science from Harvard University, he educated at Yale, Harvard, and afterward for the majority of his vocation as a teacher at the City University of New York Graduate Center, until he passed on in 1984. His little world test while at Harvard drove analysts to examine the level of connectedness, including the six degrees of partition idea. Later in his profession, Milgram built up a
In the Article by Philip Meyer’s “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably” discusses the Milgram experiment, and the readiness to obey authority without question.
In Lauren Slater’s book Opening Skinner’s Box, the second chapter “Obscura” discusses Stanley Milgram, one of the most influential social psychologists. Milgram created an experiment which would show just how far one would go when obeying instructions from an authoritative figure, even if it meant harming another person while doing so. The purpose of this experiment was to find justifications for what the Nazi’s did during the Holocaust. However, the experiment showed much more than the sociological reasoning behind the acts of genocide. It showed just how much we humans are capable of.
Dalrymple starts his essay by stating that some people view opposition to authority to be principled and also romantic (254). The social worker Dalrymple mentions on the airplane with him is a prime example that certain people can be naturally against authority, but she quickly grants authority to the pilot to fly the plane (255). Dalrymple also mentions his studies under a physician and that Dalrymple would listen to her because she had far greater expanse of knowledge than him (256). Ian Parker writes his essay explaining the failed logic with Stanley Milgram’s experiment and expounds on other aspects of the experiment. One of his points is the situation’s location which he describes as inescapable (238). Another focus of Parker’s article is how Milgram’s experiment affected his career; the experiment played a role in Milgram’s inability to acquire full support from Harvard professors to earn tenure (234).
It is only natural to dismiss the idea of our own personal flaws, for who with a healthy sense of self wanders in thoughts of their own insufficiency? The idea of hypocrisy is one that strikes a sensitive nerve to most, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study done by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, involving the effects of discipline. In the essay, "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably", Meyer takes a look at Milgram's study that mimics the execution of the Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a series of subjects under similar conditions of stress, authority, and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is giving subjects the impression that they are shocking an individual for incorrectly answering a list of questions, but perhaps more interesting is the results that occur from both ends of the research. Meyer's skill in this essay is using both the logical appeal of facts and statistics as well as the pathetic appeal to emotion to get inside the reader's mind in order to inform and dissuade us about our own unscrupulous actions.
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.
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...
After its publication in 1996, Daniel Goldhagen’s PHD Thesis and book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Goldhagen, 1996) evoked great public fascination and popular interest, almost more than any other historical research on the Holocaust that came before it. His book seemed to mesmerise the public and press; The New York Times claimed it as “one of those rare new works that merit the appellation landmark.” (Bernstein, 1996). The book sold eighty thousand German copies in the first month (Adams, 2011) and as a result, Goldhagen toured the world hosting sold-out panel discussions, featuring in articles in Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, and participating in several television talk shows. (Ullrich, 1996) (Spiegel Online, 1997) (Ridderbusch, 1996) However, it also aroused distaste from certain Holocaust researchers and was met with other works of rebuttal; “it is not at all a learned enquiry” (Finkelstein and Birn, 1998, p.4) and “[h]is moral theory is radically incomplete” (Smith, 1997, pp. 48-57). Goldhagen’s book was claimed to be “a blanket [of] accusation lies” (Locke, 2007, p.26), “[r]eplete with gross misinterpretations of the secondary literature” (Finkelstein and Birn, 1998, p.4) and “simply bad” (Jäckel, 2007, p.161). The thesis was greeted with such controversy, because of its seeming lack of recognition for past research: “it dismisses the careful findings […] of several generations of eminent scholars, many of whom have devoted a lifetime t...
Josef Kramer and 48 other associates were tried for war crimes by Britain’s Military Court on June 14, 1945. Eleven of the defendants was sentenced to death, including Josef Kramer, nineteen other culprits were sent to prison for life, the remaining eight malefactors were acquitted. On December 12, 1945 Kramer and the other
Furthermore, another compelling idea supporting Staub’s claim comes from The History of the Holocaust by Carell Evans, the Presi...
The life of Heinrich Himmler is the perfect example of what happens when hatred and prejudice overpowers one’s conscience and morals.
The intersection between social psychology, history, and memory has always been a fascinating subject. Common sense would tell a person that psychology and memory are inextricably linked, but the question remains of how this relates to history? One interesting area of social psychology is Cognitive Authority. The theory of cognitive authority is helpful in elucidating why the troubling aspect of World War II memory called Holocaust Revisionism is more prominent than it really should be. In this paper, I will take a look at the tactics employed by the infamous and discredited historian, David Irving, which gained him a significant, underground movement and how these tactics relate to cognitive authority and World War II memory in general.
Alice Miller lived in Europe during Adolf Hitler’s reign, and the atrocities that he is infamous for had a profound impact on her life and work. Many of her writings include information on Hitler’s childhood as well as speculation on how he would have been different if he had been raised in a loving environment. In fact, Miller (1983) did extensive research on Hitler’s childhood and best summed it up with the phrase: “When Hitler was grown and came to power, he was finally able to avenge himself a thousand fold” (p.196).
In Auschwitz, a Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, Doctor Miklos Nyiszli tells his tale on the things he experienced and witnessed at one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. His story encounters the horrors of the camp, from a very unique point of view. In his struggle to survive and tell his tale, Nyiszli volunteered to work alongside a Nazi war criminal who conducted and performed experiments on innocents. Nyiszli was forced to perform horrific “scientific research” projects for his supervisor, the notorious, Doctor Josef Mengele. During his time there, he witnessed the inhumane and unjustified extermination of his own people. Because of his acquired position alongside Mengele, and some luck, he was able to escape alive and testify
Is it really that simple for ordinary individuals, especially those trained to save lives, to become murderers? While a thorough investigation of that question exceeds the constraints of this paper, one brief interpretation will be proposed, namely the concept of “doubling” put forth by Robert Jay Lifton, based on extensive research and interviews with former Nazi doctors. His findings suggest that a physician agreeing to participate in mass murder would soon undergo a psychological split of the self into two complete wholes. The sense of conscience would be transferred into the second self— which Lifton often refers to as the Auschwitz self— but with adapted criteria of right and wrong. Remaining loyal to the fatherland would be good, for example, while failing to protect the Aryan race would be bad. In this context, the second self could then commit murder, like by operating the gas chambers, without really interpreting it as murder, while the first self could be absolved of all responsibility (Lifton
Even though most everyone’s perception of Hitler as an maniacal lunatic is quite universal, shedding light on a few unknown facts about the controversial man might lead to giving more understanding as to why he committed genocide instead of the hate without comprehension of what he had been through. While Hitler has committed innumerable atrocious acts of war during his time as Reich, many events during his rising up caused him to become the tyrannical murderer he is, such as his relationship with his father, his early childhood education, and his struggle in Vienna.