Discuss the “Milgram Conformity Experiment”, include ethical considerations and the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The aim of the 1963 Milgram Conformity experiment was to research obedience and the length individuals would go under instruction of an authoritarian. This basis of experiment was inspired by the Nuremberg War trials where Nazi defendants claimed to be just following orders when committing the heinous crimes of torture and brutality against innocent people. Milgram aimed to study and understand how, if at all, it was possible people could deny their morality in order to conform and obey figures in an authorative position. He believed people obeyed out of fear or out of desire to feel cooperative even when acting against …show more content…
their own better judgement. (Encina, 2004) Simply, the experiment studied conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience (Brennan, 2016). The Milgram Conformity experiment involved 40 males from the New Haven area. The men ranged in age (between 20-50) and occupation in attempt to provide a broader sample. Participants were told the experiment would be examining the effects of punishment on learning. In each trial of the study there were three men in the laboratory in Yale. The experimenter (authority figure giving orders), the teacher (the test subject intended to obey the experimenter) and the learner (a confederate of the experiment, learning from the teacher). The subject of the experiment the “teacher” was lead to believe he was randomly selected to be the teacher and his counterpart the learner through deception. The men drew straws to determine which role they would play in the experiment. This was a method used to, in a sense, equalize the men because the test subject believed each were just as likely to end up getting shocked. The predetermined learner is then strapped to a chair with what the teacher perceived as electro nodes with the potential to reach up to 450V (severe shock). The teacher was then given a sample 45V shock to demonstrate the sort of shock he believed he would be administering. The learner is then taken to a separate room from the teacher, out of his sight. This creates distance as he cannot be seen physically suffering from the shocks, only heard. The test subject is then required to teach the learner in a “memory experiment”, if the learner fails to recall the appropriate word the teacher is required to administer a shock. The shocks would begin as light shocks at 15V, as the learner continuously and intentionally got the answers wrong the intensity of the shocks would increase and with that the reactions to the pain felt by the learner would increase to screaming in pain to becoming unconscious. As the severity of the shocks increased we saw the level of discomfort in the test subjects increase.
Many showed severe levels of distress and questioned the experimenter but once “prodded” using the four scripted prods including “It is absolutely essential that you continue” and “You have no other choice but to continue” proceeded in administering the shocks. An astonishing 65% of subjects administered the highest shock of 450V labelled “XXX” and all the test subjects administered the shock at 300V. This displays to us that under the demand of authority figures it is very likely an individual would go against their own moral conscience, such as killing an innocent person to obey. This is because obedience is ingrained in us all through social conditioning (Brennan, …show more content…
2016). It was also noted that some factors would increase obedience such as the victim being further away or out of sight or having co-participants who obliged without argument. Similarly, it was recognized that the closer the experimenter stood to the test subjects the easier they complied and administered the shock (Lynch, 2016) Milgram’s experiment did demonstrate that the majority of people (65%) would go against their own conscience and morality when being coaxed by an authority figure, in this case a man in a white lab coat. But it is vital that we consider the weaknesses of Milgram’s experiment, many of which were the numerous ethical issues which Milgram blatantly ignored. During the time this experiment was conducted there were “no formal ethical guidelines for the protection of the human subjects. Researchers tended to use their own judgment about whether their research posed an ethical problem...ethical questions...took a back seat to scientific value"(Blass 71) (Reilly, 2015) Nowadays with new legislation and strict guidelines in relation to the scientific method there are many ethical issues to be considered in re-evaluated in relation to Milgram’s experiment.
The ethical codes for conducting experiments state that withdrawal should me permissible if the participant wishes to do so, in the case of this experiment the participants were strongly encouraged to continue administering shocks through various methods such as prodding and the experimenters standing over them. They were also given their payment upon arrival so many believed failure to comply with the study would mean they would lose the money. Milgram insists participants were free to withdraw at any time but argued that encouraging the shocks was a necessity in an experiment studying obedience. (McLeod, 2007) The issue of deception was hugely evident in this experiment. The participants firstly believed the experiment was studying the effects of punishment on learning, secondly they believed they were drawing straws to decide who would be receiving and who would be administering electric shocks and finally they were lead to believe the pain they were inflicting on the learner was in fact
genuine. The participants of this experiment were exposed to extreme levels of distress and discomfort as they were pressured into “hurting” the learners of the experiment. This had huge potential to result in psychological trauma for some of the participants in the study as many admitted afterwards feeling extremely uncomfortable as they truly believed they were hurting the learner. Luckily, follow up interviews revealed there were no long term psychological repercussions for the participants. This experiment lacked ecological validity as was set in a laboratory and not in the real world. This immediately, partially, discredits the results as they are not applicable to everyday life. Participants were aware they were under observation. This may have changed they reacted and obeyed commands. Some participants may have suspected the learner wasn’t actually receiving electric shocks therefore the experiment could be said to be lacking experimental realism. Participants also received a sum of 4.50$ (equivalent to about 25$ today) upon arrival to take part in the experiment which may have also leaded them to comply with the experimenter in fear that they may lose the money if they don’t although it was noted that some of the participants offered to give back the money if it meant they could withdraw from the experiment displaying how psychologically straining the experiment was. This experiment lacked population validity as the sample small for this experiment was relatively small, with only 40 participants all from the same area of New Haven. This does not give a very wide range of results and these results cannot be applied to an entire population, also the participants were “self-selected” and so do not represent American Population. Similarly, the participants were all males aged 20-50. This discounts female influence completely. It also discounts younger and older influence with may sway the results in either direction. There are some strengths in Milgram’s study. The experiment is replicable, which means is can be carried out again to determine accuracy. The experiment has been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusion as in Milgram’s study. Jerry M. Burger replicated this study nearly 50 years after the original with the belief that there is greater societal awareness of the dangers of blind obedience but his findings, shockingly, almost mirrored Milgram’s in that the majority of participants were willing to administer the highest shock, in this case 150V if a person in a position of authority encouraged them to do so (Mills, 2016) Due to the study taking place in a laboratory all the participants were under the same conditions there were no outside influences or other varying stimuli to interfere with the results. This increases the internal validity of the controlled observation, but also the setting makes the study more externally reliable because psychologists are able to repeat the study easier In Milgram’s study participants were pressured against following their standards and be responsive to others. They were torn between here the victims please, their own values and the experimenter’s orders.
However, all of the participants continued to administer up to three-hundred volts. These were everyday “normal” people that functioned successfully in society. Slater had the opportunity to interview one of the participants of Milgram’s experiment, one which happened to follow through with the shocks all the way to the very last one. During the interview the participant stated, “You thought you were really giving shocks, and nothing can take away from you the knowledge of how you acted” (Slater, 59). These words came from the mouth of an “average joe” that never knew what he was capable of before the experiment. With these words, we are reminded that we are not as “nice” as we’d like to think we
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University wanted to study and observe how people would react to authority if asked to continue on a task even if it meant hurting another human being. The experiment first began at night in a small shadowy room. For the experiment, it required three people, there was first the volunteer which was a random person from the street who was considered the teacher in the experiment. Then their was the two actors who Milgram had payed them to be in the experiment, one of the two actors was the leaner who was strapped to the electric
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 being the real subject and the learner is merely an actor. Both were told that they would be involved in a study that tests the effects of punishment on learning. The learner was strapped into a chair that resembles a miniature electric chair, and was told he would have to learn a small list of word pairs. For each incorrect answer he would be given electric shocks of increasing intensity ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The experimenter informed the teacher's job was to administer the shocks. The...
The teachers would initiate a “shock” to the student every time they got an answer wrong, but the teachers were unaware that the shock was fake. As the experiment continued, the shocks became more severe, and the students would plead for the teacher to stop since they were in pain. Despite the fact, that the participants continuously asked the authoritative experimenter if they could stop, “...relatively few people [had] the resources needed to resist authority” (Cherry 5). The participants feared questioning the effectiveness of the experiment, or restraining from continuing in fear of losing their job, going to jail, or getting reprimanded by Yale. A majority of the participants were intimidated by the experimenter, hence why they continued to shock the students, even though they knew morally, it was incorrect what they were doing. This experiment concluded, “...situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining obedience...” (5). One's decisions are based on the situation they are facing. If someone is under pressure, they will resort to illogical decision making. There thoughts could potentially be altered due to fear, or hostility. In conclusion, the rash, incohesive state of mind, provoked by fear will eventually lead to the rise of
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 Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
The apparatus used was a simulated shock generator that would administer the shocks but none would be physically damaging. The participants believed they were giving victim an electric shock ranging from 15 to 450 volts, but in actuality the machine was not working. Participants included 40 males who were between the ages of 20 and 50 years old (Milgram, 1963). Compensation was set at $4.50 for just showing up to the experiment, not based on the outcome. Participants believed that they were helping someone with a learning experiment to see how penalties affected remembrance (Milgram, 1963). The penalty is the electric shock given by the participants to the man they had never met. The person, participants believed was the subject of the experiment was an Irish-American man who was 47 years old. The experimenter conducting the experiment was a 31 year old high school biology
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.
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
Stanley Milgram selected 40 college participants aged 20-50 to take part in the experiment at Yale University. Milgram says, “The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measureable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim” (632). Although the 40 men or women thought that they were in a drawing to see who would be the “teacher” and the “learner,” the drawing was fixed. The learners were a part of Milgram’s study and taken into a room with electrodes attached to their arms. The teachers were to ask questions to the learners and if they answered incorrectly, they were to receive a 15-450 voltage electrical shock. Although the learners were not actually being shocked, the teachers believed t...
In “ Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments On Obedience” by Diana Baumrind, and in “Obedience” by Ian Parker, the writers claim that Milgram’s Obedience is ethically wrong and work of evil because of the potential harm that the subjects of the experiment had. While Baumrind’s article focused only on the Subjects of the experiment, Parker’s article talked about both immediate and long term response to experiment along with the reaction of both the general public and Milgram’s colleagues, he also talks about the effect of the experiment on Milgram himself. Both articles discuss has similar points, they also uses Milgram’s words against him and while Baumrind attacks Milgram, Parker shows the reader that experiment
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
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 Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram conducted experiments with the objective of knowing “how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist" (Milgram 317). In the experiments, two participants would go into a warehouse where the experiments were being conducted and inside the warehouse, the subjects would be marked as either a teacher or a learner. A learner would be hooked up to a kind of electric chair and would be expected to do as he is being told by the teacher and do it right because; whenever the learner said the wrong word, the intensity of the electric shocks were increased. Similar procedure was undertaken on t...
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...