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Milgram perils of obedience sparknotes
Milgram the perils of obedience
Milgram the perils of obedience
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“Let Me Out Of Here, let me out, let me out” is just one of the many saying that was heard from the Learner during Milgram’s Experiment. Stanley Milgram a psychologist at Yale University, conducted experiments in 1961 focusing on an individual obedience to authority and their personal conscience. The goal of the experiment was to ration the effects of punishment concerning memory and learning. He began this by posting an advertisement in the paper of the New Heaven area requesting male participants between ages 20 and 50. The men who replied and participated in the experiment were paid 4.50 (McLeod) (Ferris p.140). When the men arrived they were paired with another man an actor who was a confederate. The two men drew pieces of paper stating what they were expose to be during the experiment either the “Teacher” or the “Learner”. What the men who replied form the paper did not know was that the drawing was rigged and the actor always became the Learner. There was …show more content…
It just goes to prove that obedience is ingrained in us all from the way we are raised. We are raised to listen to our elders in the family situation or individuals in authority in the school and workplace situations (McLeod). By looking at Milgram’s experiment we can see how certain elements play a part in making our decisions. Like when the Teacher asked the experimenter who was going to take responsibly for shocking the learner. The Teacher was more willing to continue the experiment when the experimenter was in a lab coat instead of street clothes. From the experimenter wearing the lab coat the teacher saw him as superior individual making the teacher more likely to obey. Whereas the experimenter wearing street clothes made the teacher uneasy to obey his command to continue shocking the
Milgram’s experiment basically states, “Be that as it may, you’d still probably commit heinous acts under the pressure of authority.” He also, found that obedience was the highest when the person giving the orders was nearby and was perceived as an authority figure, especially if they were from a prestigious institution. This was also true if the victim was depersonalized or placed at a distance such as in another room. Subjects were more likely to comply with orders if they didn’t see anyone else disobeying if there were no role models of defiance.
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.
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).
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.
“Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition, compiled by Christine R. Farris and Deanna M. Jessup, Pearson, 2013, pp. 89-95. Originally published in American Psychological Association.
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.
Scientist tell people they are doing a test on the effects of punishment on learning, but the real
Baumrind, Diana. “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New Jersey: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 224-229. Print.
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
... More people followed their direct orders and continued shocking the learners to the very highest voltage. Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own natural instincts. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world examples, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures.
The Milgram experiment of the 1960s was designed to ascertain why so many Germans decided to support the Nazi cause. It sought to determine if people would be willing to contradict their conscience if they were commanded to do so by someone in authority. This was done with a psychologist commanding a teacher to administer an electric shock to a student each time a question was answered incorrectly. The results of the Milgram experiment help to explain why so many men in Nazi Germany were recruited to support the Nazi cause and serve as a warning against the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the United States government.
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.
In school, many teachers or instructors might influence their student by knowing their level of obedience. Some of them might use punishment if the students didn’t follow a certain instruction or disobey the rule. On the article The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram, the experiment has huge confusion if it is successful by punishing other people with electric shock if they got wrong or disobey an instruction. If you were the student in this experiment, do you think you would face harm? Although Milgram’s experiment was unethical, his studies brought attention to human behavior that is both interesting and terrifying.
middle of paper ... ... Works Cited Baumrind, Diana. A. A “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” From. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.
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...