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Ethos logos pathos critical analysis
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Ethos logos pathos critical analysis
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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.
When calling the experiment a game, one can grasp the feelings of Diana Baumrind on Stanley Milgram’s experiments. In the excerpt Baumrind presents the unethical aspects of Milgram’s experiments. She labels the laboratory an untraditional setting to conduct an experiment, saying, “the laboratory is unfamiliar as a setting and the rules of behavior ambiguous compared to a clinician’s office” (225). Throughout her article she sides with the subjects, expounding on the way the subject is being treated during the experiment. Baumrind feels they are not treated with the respect they deserve. She says it is now the ordinary in sociopsyc...
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...tal variables and the distinct reference the Holocaust Nazis the journal was immediately accepted and sent to printing companies for publishing (231). In Heather Miller’s online report of Stanley Milgram’s linking of the obedience from the subjects to the Nazis, she explains the My Lai invasion as example in which Milgram’s proposal is arguably true (Psychology History). The My Lai invasion took place in the Vietnam War; American troops simply invaded a village, massacring over 350 Vietnamese men, women, and children. Miller states Milgram argued that the military training was the reason for the obedience of these soldiers. She says, “The purpose of basic training is to break down the concepts of individuals and expand on the group or unit. During this time the soldiers spend a lot of time being disciplined. Following orders is the basis for the soldiers' actions.”
In the Article by Philip Meyer’s “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably” discusses the Milgram experiment, and the readiness to obey authority without question.
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.
In this chapter, the author Lauren Slater describes Stanley Milgram and his experiment about obedience to authority.
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.
It is human nature to respect and obey elders or authoritative figures, even when it may result in harm to oneself or others. Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, conducted an experiment to test the reasoning behind a person’s obedience. He uses this experiment in hope to gain a better understanding behind the reason Hitler was so successful in manipulating the Germans along with why their obedience continued on such extreme levels. Milgram conducts a strategy similar to Hitler’s in attempt to test ones obedience. Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist, disagreed with Milgram’s experiment in her article, ”Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s “Behavioral Study of obedience”, Baumrind explains
It is only natural to dismiss the idea of our own personal flaws, for who with a healthy sense of self wanders in thoughts of their own insufficiency? The idea of hypocrisy is one that strikes a sensitive nerve to most, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study done by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, involving the effects of discipline. In the essay, "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably", Meyer takes a look at Milgram's study that mimics the execution of the Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a series of subjects under similar conditions of stress, authority, and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is giving subjects the impression that they are shocking an individual for incorrectly answering a list of questions, but perhaps more interesting is the results that occur from both ends of the research. Meyer's skill in this essay is using both the logical appeal of facts and statistics as well as the pathetic appeal to emotion to get inside the reader's mind in order to inform and dissuade us about our own unscrupulous actions.
War has always been an essential ingredient in the development of the human race. As a result of the battles fought in ancient times, up until modern warfare, millions of innocent lives have ended as a result of war crimes committed. In the article, “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience,” Herbert C. Kelman and V.Lee Hamilton shows examples of moral decisions taken by people involved with war-related murders. This article details one of the worse atrocities committed during the Vietnam War in 1968 by the U.S. military: the My Lai Massacre. Through this incident, the question that really calls for psychological analysis is why so many people are willing to formulate , participate in, and condone policies that call for the mass killings of defenseless civilians such as the atrocities committed during the My Lai massacre. What influences these soldiers by applying different psychological theories that have been developed on human behavior.
The motion picture A Few Good Men challenges the question of why Marines obey their superiors’ orders without hesitation. The film illustrates a story about two Marines, Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey charged for the murder of Private First Class William T. Santiago. Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is known to be lackadaisical and originally considers offering a plea bargain in order to curtail Dawson’s and Downey’s sentence, finds himself fighting for the freedom of the Marines; their argument: they simply followed the orders given for a “Code Red”. The question of why people follow any order given has attracted much speculation from the world of psychology. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted an experiment in which randomly selected students were asked to deliver “shocks” to an unknown subject when he or she answered a question wrong. In his article, “The Perils of Obedience”, Milgram concludes anyone will follow an order with the proviso that it is given by an authoritative figure. Two more psychologists that have been attracted to the question of obedience are Herbert C. Kelman, a professor at Harvard University, and V. Lee Hamilton, a professor at the University of Maryland. In their piece, Kelman and Hamilton discuss the possibilities of why the soldiers of Charlie Company slaughtered innocent old men, women, and children. The Marines from the film obeyed the ordered “Code Red” because of how they were trained, the circumstances that were presented in Guantanamo Bay, and they were simply performing their job.
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.
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
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
It is amazing to look back and realize that this experiment was done to determine how the Nazis could all have so much hate towards the Jewish people. The lack of compassion towards humans shown by the Nazi Germans during the holocaust inspired Milgram to conduct this experiment. He was curious on how any sane human being could want to participate in genocide of an entire group of people. It’s incredible to know that something like the Nazi war could bring about such valuable information to psychology. For years Milgram’s theory has been one of the primary points of social psychology. Because of the results revealed after Milgram’s creative design, psychologists use this information today to describe certain behaviors in people. I believe it is fair to say that Stanley Milgram has had one of the largest impacts in the history of social psychology.
In a series of experiments conducted from 1960 to 1963, American psychologist Stanley Milgram, sought to examine the relationship between obedience and authority in order to understand how Nazi doctors were able to carry out experiments on prisoners during WWII. While there are several theories about Milgram’s results, philosopher Ruwen Ogien uses the experiment as grounds for criticizing virtue ethics as a moral theory. In chapter 9 of Human Kindness and The Smell of Warm Croissant, Ogien claims that “what determines behavior is not character but other factors tied to situation” (Ogien 120). The purpose of this essay is not to interpret the results of the Milgram experiments. Instead this essay serves to argue why I am not persuaded by Ogien’s
The first thing I found to be extremely fascinating was the Milgram Study. This study in particular explains in dept how an average person will obey to an authority figure even though the orders could be terrible. I think it’s a fascinating study because typically individuals will not complete an order if it makes them feel uncomfortable. However, once you place someone with higher power they forget about the discomfort and instantly obey to the orders given to them. This topic is important in psychology because it shows the relationship of obedience. It goes to show the factors that have to be put in place for a person to obey to someone else’s orders. This helps psychologist understand how a person with higher power can ultimately control the decisions of a person with lower power.
Benjamin Jr. Ludy T. & Simpson, Jeffrey A. The Power of the Situation: The Impact of Milgram’s Obedience Studies on Personality and Social Psychology. From American Psychologist. Vol. 64 (1), pp.12-18, 2009.