Summary Of Stanley Milgram's Behavioral Study Of Obedience

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In July of 1961, Stanley Milgram began his experiment of obedience. He first published an article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963. This article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, is what this paper will be critiquing. He then wrote a book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, in 1974 discussing his results in more detail. Milgram’s inspiration was the World War II and Adolf Hitler. During World War II, millions of innocent people were killed in a very organized manor. Milgram (1963) compares the organization and accuracy of the deaths, to the “efficiency as the manufacture of appliances” (p. 371). Milgram (1963) defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose” (p. 371). Milgram acknowledges that it may only take one person to come up with an idea, such as Hitler coming up with a way to eradicate the Jews, but would take an …show more content…

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

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