Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The relationship between power and authority<term paper
Obedience and authority
Nature of authority
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Summary Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a study at Yale University in 1962, in an attempt to understand how individuals will obey directions or commands. This study become known as the Milgram Obedience Study. Stanley Milgram wanted to understand how normal people could become inhumane, cruel, and severely hurt other people when told to carry out an order, in a blind obedience to authority. This curiosity stemmed from the Nazi soldiers in Germany, and how their soldiers could do horrible acts to the Jews. To carry out his study, Dr. Milgram created a machine with an ascending row of switches that were marked with an increasing level of voltage that could be inflicted on another person. Then, he gathered forty random males between the ages of 20 and 50 that lived in the local area. He then told them that this experiment was to see how people learned through pain or punishment rather than without. The teacher volunteer would see the other volunteer or victim put on electronic straps and would not be able to see the person being shocked but could hear them. This setup was fake and the person being shocked had pre-recorded answers and reactions to the ascending row of buttons. The teacher volunteer would ask questions through a headset to the victim volunteer, and whenever a question was answered incorrectly, the teacher would increase the level of
Furthermore, this shed light on how Nazi’s were pushed to doing horrible actions, simply because someone in a position of authority told them to and was responsible for their actions. There is an additional factor to consider, that the populace in 1962 was more inclined to comply with this scenario than the current populace. I definitely think that our current generation between 20 and 50 year old males are more inclined to question authority than the group from 1962.
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...
In the research article “OBEY AT ANY COST”, Stanley Milgram conducted a study to examine the concept of obedience and composed disturbing findings. Milgram’s findings on obedience were considered one of the most influential and famous works in the history of psychology. His examination on obedience was that people were possibly capable of doing abuse to other individuals by being demanded to do so. Milgram pertained this to World War II and the inhumanity that has been bolstered and the barbarity. Yet, his hypothesis was that people have the propensity to obey is authoritative which cancels out a person’s capability to act morally, sympathetically, or even ethically. However, Milgram’s theoretical basis for this particular study was that human
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.
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...
He did not fully disclose the fact that the “learner” was not receiving any electric shocks, as well as the true purpose behind the experiment. To make the experiment more of a reality to the “teachers” he gave them a real electric shock on one of the lower voltages, to give them an idea of what pain the “learner” would be experiencing. Diana Baumrind in her article “Is Milgram’s Deception Research Ethically Acceptable?” she writes, “Lying to subjects when obtaining ‘informed’ consent violates the right of prospective subjects” (Baumrind, para.3). On the contrary, Saul McLeod, who has a “degree in psychology and have a masters degree in research,” (simplypsychology,org), writes in his article, The Milgram Experiment “[h]owever, Milgram argued that ‘illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths’. [(Milgram, para. 43-44)]” (McLeod, para. 1, Ethical Issues). In the 1960s there was no mandatory ethical rules of conduct, there was only suggestions that did not have to be taken. Taking this into account, I believe that the way that Milgram went about the proposition of the experiment was deceitful. Especially given the fact that Milgram shocked the “teacher,” and the “learner” was an actor that was never
Firstly, the experiment took place at Yale University, which creates an atmosphere of credibility and importance. Those participating were also lead to believe that their contribution went to a worthy cause – to advance knowledge and understanding of learning processes. They were also told that the victim (the learner), was taking part voluntarily meaning they had an obligation to fulfill even if it became unpleasant, (also applies to the teacher). Additionally, the volunteers were being paid which created a further sense of commitment to the investigation. Those who took part also had little knowledge about how psychological experiments ran, as Milgram’s study was most likely the first one they ever partook in. Therefore they had little knowledge about the rights and expectations of the situation, and felt more confined than if they had been through a similar experience prior. The participant was also under the impression that the roles of being the teacher or learner were assigned randomly, so there were no feelings of unfairness in the system. The partakers had also been assured that the shocks were “painful but not dangerous” and that the procedure was all part of a worthy long term cause (Holah). Lastly, the victim responded to all of the questions until the 300 Volt was reached, convincing the participant of their willingness and persistence to
The real focus of the experiment is the teacher. He will be in charge of a shock generator. The teacher does not know that the learner, supposedly the victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock whatsoever. Again this experiment is to see if the teacher proceeds with the shocks that are ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim.
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.
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.
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...
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, 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 Milgram Experiment was biased and had many factors and variations that affected the outcome of his data. His experiment dealt with only male participants and so the data is not really able to represent how female participants would react. The American population is not able to be represented as well because his participants were self-selected. His participants came from a newspaper advertisement, so those who were wealthy and educated had the chance to participate, where those who were not wealthy and could not read, were not able to participate (Saltzman, 2000).