The Milgram experiment is probably one of the most well known experiments in Psychology. The reason being is because its participants were not told what was really occurring in the experiment. After the experiment was over, the participants were mentally and emotionally affected. Later, a cognitive psychologist, George Miller described Milgram’s experiments, together with Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment, as “being ideal for public consumption of psychological research” (Blass, 2002). And indeed, Milgram’s studies, as Zimbardo’s, are clearly meant to be spread to a broad audience, the moral and preventative objectives permeating the experiments from their very outset (Stavrakis, 2007).. In this paper, I will explore how experiments such as Milgram and Zimbardo’s, as well as the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment, changed the way experiments are conducted today because of the formation of the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The Milgram experiment began in 1961, shortly after World War II. After the war is when the infamous Nuremburg Trials took place. The actions of the Natzis really stood out to Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist. He wanted to study the willingness to obey instructions from an authority figure to perform acts that conflicted with one’s personal conscience, such as those that occurred during the Holocaust. He came up with an experimental set-up where he could test the levels of obedience when people were ordered to punish another person by subjecting him to increasing levels of painful electric shocks – this person was actually receiving no shocks at all (Diski, 2004). The basis of the experiment included the participant, a second person, who was actually a confederate, and an experimenter in a grey la... ... middle of paper ... ...anford prison experiment. American Psychologist, 53(7): 709- 727. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 67: 371–378. Milgram, S. (1965a). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human Relations, 18(1): 57-70. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. London: Tavistock Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6: 282-293. Parker, I. (2005). Lacanian discourse analysis in psychology: Seven theoretical elements. Theory & Psychology, 15: 163–82. Rothman, D.J. (1987). Ethics and human experimentation. New England Journal of Medicine, 317: 1195- 9. Stavrakakis, Y. (2007). The lacanian left. Psychoanalysis, theory, politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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.
Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience are the focus of Theodore Dalrymple and Ian Parker. Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician that composed his views of the Milgram experiment with “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” in the New Statesman in July 1999 (254). He distinguishes between blind obedience and blind disobedience stating that an extreme of either is not good, and that a healthy balance between the two is needed. On the other hand, Ian Parker is a British writer who wrote “Obedience” for an issue of Granta in the fall of 2000. He discusses the location of the experiment as a major factor and how the experiment progresses to prevent more outcomes. Dalrymple uses real-life events to convey his argument while Parker exemplifies logic from professors to state his point.
Baumrind, Diana. “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New Jersey: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 224-229. Print.
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 Stanley Milgram “Obedience” Study was an experiment conducted at Yale University in 1962 by Milgram, who’s goal was to test the power of obedience to authority. Milgram was in search to understand how the Nazis, who were normal German citizens, could willingly inflict pain onto innocent people. In order to find the answer to this, Milgram decided to perform a research that measured the willingness of an ordinary individual to commit cruel acts on a civilian. The experiment had an intricate set up which involved three participants that all had a different role. There was the “teacher”, “learner”, and “authoritative figure” who was dressed in a lab coat and posed as a scientist. The learner and authoritative figure were actors who were
The Milgram experiment of the 1960s was designed to ascertain why so many Germans decided to support the Nazi cause. It sought to determine if people would be willing to contradict their conscience if they were commanded to do so by someone in authority. This was done with a psychologist commanding a teacher to administer an electric shock to a student each time a question was answered incorrectly. The results of the Milgram experiment help to explain why so many men in Nazi Germany were recruited to support the Nazi cause and serve as a warning against the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the United States government.
Three big ideas in Obedience to Authority are personal conscience, the power of obedience, and the influence of authority. With the authority figure pressuring the participants to keep going with the shocks, the participants felt they had to obey. Milgram found, “Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out.” (Pg. 4-5). The syllables are.
Starting in 1961, Stanley Milgram, a professor of psychology at Yale University began conducting one of the most “infamous” psychology experiments in history. The tests are “infamous” because of not only the results they revealed, but also because the manner in which the tests were performed is considered unethical by today’s standards of testing. The experiment, which was mentioned in the New Haven Register newspaper as a “scientific study of memory and learning,” was actually an effort to investigate obedience to authority. In order to attract participants Milgram offered $4 for one hour of a person’s time. In the ensuing two years, hundreds of people would be a part of the experiment at Milgram’s
Haslam, Nick, Steve Loughnan, and Gina Perry. "Meta-Milgram: An Empirical Synthesis of the Obedience Experiments." PLoS ONE 9.4 (2014): 1-9. Print.
In today’s society, obedience to authority is a common factor that is taught at a young age, in which there is a constant lesson to obey the elders and teachers. Disobedience and obedience in lodged deeply within everyone and without recognition, is an automatic response, however there are numerous times where society conforms to a new political standpoint which can turn out to be genocidal effect. Therefore Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted the Milgram Experiment in which he puts volunteered test subjects in an environment where they have the opportunity to obey or disobey authority while causing unnecessary pain to an individual, exemplified in his article, “The Perils of Obedience”. Within his essay, the author reveals that the percentage of people who were willing to
The general goal of the experiment was to see how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict another person just because he or she was ordered to do so by an experimental scientist. In his article, "The Perils of Obedeince", Milgram concluded his analysis of the experiment by saying "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority," (Milgram, 1974, p76). Milgram summarized that obedience is a basic behavior element in social life that is deeply ingrained that it override people from acting according to the ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct (Milgram, 1973, p62). The way obedience is set in the modern society leads to the loss of personal responsibility from ordinary citizens. In the society, people are taught to behave legally and morally. However, Milgram argued that learning ethics does not necessarily determine what people will actually do in their real-life situations (Milgram, 1973, p76). To check the experiment 's accuracy, similar experiments were held in different countries such as South Africa,
Factors such as institutional authority, people’s attitude change after the experiment, participants’ interaction with the experimenters or the confederates may play an important role in the results of Milgram’s experiment. People or even social psychologists can also be vulnerable to the situational factors and thus conform or obey.
In Milgram’s article, he discusses the basic principle of obedience and the necessity of such behavior in the structure of society and all social life. For many people, obedience is a deeply engraved behavior pattern, and very well a strong impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct (Milgram 579). Milgram set up an experiment at Yale University to see how much pain one would inflict on another simply because of being commanded to do so. Authority won more than not.
In 1963 Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, created an experiment examining obedience. This experiment has been questioned by many psychology professionals. One psychologist Diana Baumrind transcribes her feelings in the “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Baumrind, when writing the review, was employed at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. In her review Baumrind denounces Milgram for his treatment of his subjects, potentially harming their self image. However, Ian Parker, a British journalist who has written for the New Yorker and Human Sciences, believes Milgram’s findings still hold a significant place in society today. In his article “Obedience” Parker focuses on the purpose of the experiments, differing from Baumrind’s emphasis on the unethical theories of the experiment. Baumrind believes the setting was a factor playing against the results of the experiment, Baumrind and Parker both make references to the unethical beliefs of the experiment; they also dissolve the reference to Milgram’s comparison to the Nazi Party during the Holocaust.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.