Ron Jones, a schoolteacher at a high school in Palo Alto, California created a movement or experiment in which he ended up turning his students into Nazis. This experiment, known as “The Third Wave”, showed that students would respond to extreme discipline by obeying. His hypothesis was that if students preformed in a more disciplined environment, they would begin to comply with the rules and accept them. The independent variable of “The Third Wave” was Mr. Jones, who orchestrated the entire experiment, hanging what he would require the students to do. On the other hand, the students in his class that complied with these rules, were the dependent variable of the experiment. Mr. Jones started his experiment by giving his students
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.
In this article “The Pearls of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram asserts that obedience to authority is a common response for many people in today’s society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals. Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a person’s tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts.
... More people followed their direct orders and continued shocking the learners to the very highest voltage. Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own natural instincts. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world examples, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures.
The social psychology theory that I will be analyzing is based on the Stanley Milgram experiment done in 1965 following the start of the Nazi war. He was curios on all the violence taking place during this time. As a Jew himself, he wanted to find out whether or not the Adolf Eichmann accomplice had the same intent and hate towards the Jewish people during the holocaust. Based on Solomon Asch’s past experiments on conformity, Milgram’s experiment was done to determine whether or not the power of the situation could cause average people to conform to obedience. The results of Milgram’s experiment were astounding. The research of Milgram’s experiment had such a major impact on social psychology that we still use his findings to analyze human behavior today.
“Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments of Obedience” was written by Diane Baumrind. Baumrind is a psychologist at the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkley. Throughout her article, Baumrind attacks multiple aspects of Milgram’s experiment. She immediately states that the location of the experiment played a factor in the produced results (Baumrind 225). She continues in saying the lack of emotion and concern from the teacher caused heavy stress on the subjects. Baumrind also calls into question the supposed attempts of Milgram to allow the subjects to leave in a clear, whole state of mind (Baumrind 227). The affects the experiment would have on the subjects afterwards is also a point of concern for Baumrind. Lastly, Baumrind pleads for the subjects to be fully informed of the experiment they would be partaking in (Baumrind 229). However, Baumrind is not the only author who reviews the experiment. Ian Parker, “Obedience”, writes about the consequences Milgram himself experienced after the results of hi...
Obedience to authority and willingness to obey an authority against one’s morals has been a topic of debate for decades. Stanley Milgrim, a Yale psychologist, conducted a study in which his subjects were commanded by a person in authority to initiate lethal shocks to a learner; his experiment is discussed in detail in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgrim 77). Milgrim’s studies are said to be the most “influential and controversial studies of modern psychology” (Levine).While the leaner did not actually receive fatal shocks, an actor pretended to be in extreme pain, and 60 percent of the subjects were fully obedient, despite evidence displaying they believed what they were doing was harming another human being (Milgrim 80). Likewise, in Dr. Zimbardo, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, conducted an experiment, explained in his article “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in which ten guards were required to keep the prisoners from
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
Which is depicted when the initial harmless goals are lost and new intentions arise unrecognised. In the beginning, Ben Ross, a teacher with good intentions, was just trying to teach his students about why citizens of Germany followed corrupt orders. This later on turned into The Wave, which was a school experiment created by Ben Ross, to give his students a better understanding by giving them "a sampling, a taste of what life in Nazi Germany might have been like" (Todd Strasser, 2005, The Wave, pp. 81-82). The experiment was a success, probably too much of a success, as the students who were a part of it, took it very seriously and unknowingly created a dangerous cult like following throughout their school. This power created by the students easily drove them from their main goal which they started with: equality, to fascism. They become exposed to other desired outcomes which resultantly changed their fundamental goal. This is shown in The Wave, when the original goal of equality is diminished and students who were not a part of The Wave were treated very
When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This research, known more commonly now as the Stanford prison experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individualistic perspectives, ethics, and behavior. Later it is discovered that the results presented from the research became so extreme, instantaneous and unanticipated were the transformations of character in many of the subjects that this study, planned originally to last two-weeks, had to be discontinued by the sixth day. The results of this experiment were far more cataclysmic and startling than anyone involved could have imagined. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the discoveries from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and of Burrhus Frederic “B.F.” Skinner’s study regarding the importance of environment.
In school, many teachers or instructors might influence their student by knowing their level of obedience. Some of them might use punishment if the students didn’t follow a certain instruction or disobey the rule. On the article The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram, the experiment has huge confusion if it is successful by punishing other people with electric shock if they got wrong or disobey an instruction. If you were the student in this experiment, do you think you would face harm? Although Milgram’s experiment was unethical, his studies brought attention to human behavior that is both interesting and terrifying.
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
In society, there is a natural order of things. Teachers are authoritative figures to students, and bosses don’t fear their workers. This is simply how things are done, but when an environment of fear and pressure is applied to these structures, in the right circumstances, these social roles can flip. This behavior caused by stressful environmental changes is one of the reasons Bertolt Brecht wrote The Spy. In The Spy, a character called “the man” is a school teacher for students in the Hitler youth. The students are taught in the Hitler youth certain behaviors, “They deliberately encourage the kids to repeat everything.” (Bertolt Brecht, 4) the encouragement of this behavior has caused the students to have a sort of power over not only their teachers, but their parents as well. The power which is given to those who did not have it originally causes the social structure to reverse, essentially giving students the authority. This shift causes the original authority to fear the students, and sensor their selves around them. This will in turn stop the students from learning how possibly detrimental those they are blindly following can be. Additionally, in The Spy, the man and his wife have a maid servant who is also the block warden’s daughter. This expresses a social shift as well, because the same censorship is needed around an employee as well. The man expresses a distaste for the need for censorship in his own home due to his employee saying, “Have we got to have a maid whose father is the block warden?” (Bertolt Brecht, 2) the man’s concerns coming from what the maidservant may overhear, and report it back to her father. The wife replies to this questioning with, “We’ve been over that again and again. The last thing you said was that it had its advantages.” (Bertolt Brecht, 2) referring to the fact that their employing the block warden’s daughter will put them on his
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...
A man by the name of Stanley Milgram, Yale University psychologist, decided to test the power of peer pressure on humans in 1961. In his experiment, three people took part: the three were given the titles of experimenter, learner (victim), and teacher. The only true participant in the experiment was the teacher, the learner was an actor trained for the experiment; thus, the teacher was under the impression that everyone was a selected participant. The teacher and the learner were then placed in separate rooms where no visualization took place, but where communication was still in effect. The teacher was given an electric shock to emulate what the learner would be receiving throughout the experiment; the learner was then ordered by the teacher to answer a set of questions that would determine if the person would be shocked or not. For each incorrect answer the learner received a shock (in actuality not a real shock, but the teacher was under the impression it was) ...