Milgram's Experiments On Obedience

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What influenced Milgram’s studies the most more than Asch was in fact the Holocaust itself, as it held something personal to Milgram. Both of Migram was Jewish, and both of his parents also were Jews who immigrated from Eastern Europe, and they along with Milgram grew up in a Jewish neighborhood which led to Milgram having strong ties to his Jewish culture (Blass 2,9). Because of this the Holocaust left Milgram with a question, and a curiosity about how such an atrocity could happen to his people. Thus, Milgram formed his experiment on obedience in order to comprehend what happened during this time in which millions of Jews perished by the order of a single man and enforced by others in power. Milgram thus combined the knowledge he received …show more content…

The experiments can actually be viewed thank to a documentary called “Obedience”, in this documentary you are able to view how the experiments were carried out and even better the subjects reactions to the experimenter and the student. The subjects reactions ranged from excess sweating, nervous laughter, and even twitches as the subject faced the cries of the student and the cold prodding of the experimenter. The results of the experiments were for lack of a better word shocking. In the first experiment Remote condition testing was used in which the subject could not hear the student-65% of subjects continued to the maximum shock (Milgram, Obedience 94). The 2nd experiment tested Voice-Feedback condition in which the students cries could be heard, but not seen-62.5% made it to the maximum shock potential; in the 3rd experiment they tested Proximity condition in which the student could be heard and was placed only a few feet away from the subject-40% reached maximum shock potential; the 4th and final experiment tested Touch-Proximity condition in which the student not only could be heard and seen, but actually had physical contact with the subject-30% reached maximum shock potential (Milgram, Obedience 95-96). From the above experiments Milgram demonstrated that a negative correlation between authority and proximity of a person being abused. The experiment was conducted in other areas with different subject pools, and they produced similar results, thus illustrating the validity of Milgram’s experiment (Rathus

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