Milgram's Studies Of Obedience Essay

Milgram’s studies on obedience to authority as well as obedience under extreme stress, paved a way to understanding the human psyche and how we handle choices we do not understand. As human beings we are given from a very young age a set of morals and standards we choose to live by. We see our parent’s successes and failures and we base the choices we make on what made them happy, and what will in the long run, bring us the same joy. From the beginning of the experiment you can see the pressure he starts everyone under. Where he chooses to begin his testing tells you a lot about what he was wanting them all to feel. A very rundown, dark, empty building with prison cell like rooms with sparse walls. Pipes showing and most likely a musty smell

brings about memories, even if in the subconscious, of fear and somewhere they do not want to be.
His authority figure of choice is someone who could be construed as an authority figure or as someone who you would not likely say no to. They are paid and told that no matter what happens they get to keep their money. Everything about this situation they walked in to just scream take the money and run but curiosity leads them forward. As they enter the prison style rooms they are given a choice of teacher or learner. As neither of them can choose they are given pieces of paper who we can lead to believe is a random draw but is still a complete setup. As “luck” would have it he draws the teacher card. So they begin to strap the learner into what seems to be an electric chair. He is told to tighten the straps around his very smooth arms. Lubricate the locations for the electrodes and make sure everything is secure.
These first few tests were just the beginning of what looks to be a very stressful mind bending experience. He is taken into a room with nothing but a very dimly lit generator and a view of the other room. He is given instructions on what he is to tell the learner and when an incorrect answer is given he is to administer a shock of varying degrees between 15 and 450. This is the point in which every human has that fight or flight instinct kick in. they can choose to run from their problems and the stress or they can follow what seems to be instinct and stay the course. We see him begin to ask these word association questions and at first he seems to be doing well, and then we begin to see the downfall.
With his first wrong answer comes the first shock. Which gives him a sense of arousal but betrayal. How can something so barbaric so chaotic seem so amazing and give a sense of euphoria. Farther into the test he begins to fight with himself about wanting to quit and run or keep on asking the questions. As he fights his feeling to just turn and say no he is repeatedly told to keep going and that the learner isn’t feeling much pain. We know this to be a lie but as we all know if you tell a lie long enough, they will eventually believe it. At this moment Milgram has found the answer to his study. When in high pressure situations, more often than not, we will do what we are being instructed to by someone who seems to know what they are doing and appears to have the calmer head.
Milgram used his past experiences with studies of obedience to only further them with his own work. As we can see talking with his then assistant he says everyone including Milgram was very uneasy about it but they pressed on. Even in his own mind having to fight the feeling that what he was doing was wrong and still he continued. He had to fight past his own insecurities about right and wrong and ignore his own moral compass and lie to these people that what they were doing was real in order to get results. Many studies have shown this style of testing to be affective as proven by the results on his tests. His tests also proved another theory. We as humans from outside the box view ourselves as much higher and much smarter than we actually are.
We also see ourselves as people who could say no to being given direct orders even in the face of punishment. But as the studies show, when it comes down to the wire and we are given the same choices, we begin to fall apart at the seams. We fall back into the trap of not being able to differentiate between right and wrong with enough speed to determine for our own sakes what to do in times of extreme pressure. We always pass the hat to someone who we see as a leader and let them make the decisions for us. As soon as the subject began to say no he was reputedly told to turn around and keep going. Never given the chance to formulate the words to express how he is feeling about the situation. Insubordination is shut down before it can even start.
We read that he gets a hold of someone who swears that he was defiant. He describes exactly the situation he was put in and how it made him feel. He states that if he had continued through with all the shocks he wouldn’t be having this conversation with anyone but a psychiatrist. He paints an even more vivid picture of that night in Bridgeport. He says that it never crossed his mind that the experiment could have been fake. The blue sparks, the screaming, the lab itself still is plastered into his very soul.
All of this came around because people needed to know, perhaps for some closure on what had happened in the holocaust. How so many senseless killings came into fruition with seemingly no objectivity? We learned that when given the choice between making the decision on our own or choosing to allow someone to lead us on, most of us will choose to let someone choose. Giving us an out if things go wrong. If someone had died from being shocked it would have allowed an out from being caught up in the senseless killing of an innocent person, being able to pass the blame on to someone else. Someone we don’t even know making decisions that will change the rest of our lives.
“Blame is all around us-not just in politics, but in business, at school, and among family members. Perhaps even today you have either participated in-or hear someone-blaming others for a mistake, fault or error that has caused inconvenience or pain”. In a situation when we are questioned to make a decision on our own we normally start to stumble and let someone else make that decision for us which can end up hurting or causing someone else pain or even leading us into temptation. Do some people like to see others in pain even if it’s for fun or even for experiment? Most say people who cause pain are pathetic, and feel better about them when they can make somebody else feel inferior. They find it entertaining to torment another human being; some people like to see people suffer in pain because they find it entertaining.
Making a decision by yourself or on your own is by fair is one of the hardest thing for someone to do. Most people will go to others for questions or for helping on the situation they are in and they will make the decision for them. This is where that other person should stand up and make that decision on their own because letting someone else make that decision for you, could end up really hurting someone else, for example, the Holocaust, Hitler was a leader of the Nazi army, he made the decision for everyone to go out and kill them none blonde haired, blue eyed people and the Jews. This was by far the worst mass killing of letting someone else control the minds of other people and tell them what to kill and hurt innocent people. Days go by when innocent people are hurt by other people, like bullying for instance, the minds of people and kids are by far the worst when coming to making a decision to hurt someone innocent, kids let the other half of their brains speak their actions.

Per pressure has everything to do with this subject on letting other people make our decisions for us.

Speaking from experience I have seen an innocent human being get kicked around and beat up by some other kid older then him just because some other person tempted and talked the kid into doing it. By far that has been the worst thing and saddest thing I have ever seen in my life, how could someone be tempted to kick around some other kid just because someone told them to do it? I’m sure if the kid doing the beating was in the shoes of the kid who was getting kicked around would feel really horrible and hurt because letting someone do that to someone else is wrong to do. Temptation comes from the devil, he is the one telling you to do this stuff, telling you to hurt someone, telling you to injure someone just for pleasure and to make you think it is okay to do this kind of stuff to someone who is innocent and loving.
As you grow older, you’ll be faced with some challenging decisions to make in your life. Some don’t have a clear choice or right or wrong answer- like should you listen to a person and make the decision to hurt someone or should you not listen to them. That is the decision you need to make. Making a decision on your own is hard enough, but when other people get involved and try to pressure you one way or another it can be even harder. Like said earlier in the essay, we pass the hat down to someone else to make the decision for us because we cannot make the decision

ourselves.
We tend to make these decisions based on fear. Weather it is fear of rejection, fear of failure, or fear of death. If we leave the decision to others we believe the end result good or bad, has nothing to do with us. We will have complete deniability in every action that is taken and there for we will not feel bad if anything bad happens and we can celebrate when everything is a success. It gives us the out our subconscious needs in order to carry on our daily lives without having to skip a beat. A prime example happens all the time here in America. People choose not to vote because if something goes wrong its not their fault. They have achieved that plausible deniability that they have been looking for.
This causes a downhill affect that is very unnerving in society today. Everyone chooses to pass the buck and no one makes the decisions. And when someone does we can all hop on the band wagon and either crucify them if we feel it is wrong, or celebrate with them like we were choosing all along. We can no longer just stick our heads in the sand and let others choose for us. By completing the experiment the subjects were letting others choose for them based on fear of not knowing the outcome and if something failed they had someone to blame, but as we read when everything came out ok they left with a sense of peace and confusion.