...The Milgram Experiment was one of the most influential experiments in social psychology. It was conducted by Stanley Milgram and was published in the 1960s. These laboratory experiments offer a powerful and disturbing look into the power of authority and obedience. Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying orders if it involved performing dangerous and even deadly action against another person and that violate their own personal beliefs and values. Simply put, Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII (Taylor, Peplau & Sears, 2006). Milgram selected participants for his experiment by advertising, through the newspaper, for male participants to take part in a psychology study of learning at Yale University. The procedure was that the volunteer was paired with another person and they drew straws to find out who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher.” The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s associates (pretending to be a real participant). While in another room, the "teacher" would deliver a shock, ranging from 15 to 450 volts, to the “learner" every time an incorrect answer was produced. While the participant believed that he was delivering real shocks to the learner, the associate was simply pretending to be shocked. As the level of shock increases, the learner’s reactions...
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...Although the results of Milgram’s experiment astonished much of the psychological world, the reliability of the experiment is often questioned due to unethically perceived procedures of the study. In Milgram’s famous study researching the implications of authority figures on obedience, subjects of the experiment were deceived into thinking that they were the “teachers” of an experiment testing how a stimulus could affect learning; these teachers were instructed to shock the learner, which was actually a confederate in the study, after they incorrectly answered a question, and throughout the experiment the shock intensity would increase for every wrong answer. Throughout the study, the subjects would hear prerecorded screams, cries, and begs...
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...The Milgram Experiment The Milgram experiment took place in 1963 and was conducted by Stanley Milgram. Stanley Milgram who was a psychologist at Yale University performed this experiment to show the conflict between obedience to authority and personal ethics and morals. In 1962 Milgram wanted to investigate how the Nazis could terminate Jews during World War II without even the thought of human dignity. With this experiment he would show how the Germans were obedient to authority figures. To do this Milgram selected 40 males’ participants between the age of 20 and 50 to play 2 roles. The first role was the teacher and the second role was that of student. All the participants were teachers because Milgram rigged the selection process. With all the partisipants believing they were selected as teachers they were taken to a room where the students were connected to electrodes. The researcher asked a serious of health questions and the student would answer with some concerns but decided to continue with the test. Next the teachers were put in adjoining room seated in front of a shock generator. The shock generator was comprised of multipul switches ranging from 15 volts up to 450 volts. The researcher explained to the teachers that for every wrong answer given they were to administer a shock starting from 15 volts. For every wrong answer after that he was to increase to the next voltage and so on. The student which was a recording would show signs of pain and wanting to stop...
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...The Milgram Experiment Why do people follow orders to carry out immoral acts even when they know it is wrong? Under what circumstances are normal everyday people obedient to authority? Research Aim: To find out if people would obey an unjust order to inflict pain on someone else. Research Hypothesis: That people would not be willing to inflict pain on one another simply because they were told to do so. Variables: IV, DV, Extraneous: Independent Variable Dependent Variable Extraneous Variable Proximity of the learner Amount of shock administered Closeness of the authority Duration of the shock Prestige of the setting Speed of the response Presence of rebellious peers Research Method: Forty male participants were selected after replying to a newspaper ad for an obedience experiment. At the beginning of the experiment they met a man called Mr Wallis, a mild-mannered man in his fifties; who was then hooked up to a charge generator. He was in fact a confederate. The participant sat in another room and tested 'Mr Wallis' on word pairs, when he got one wrong, the participant was to give him an electric shock. These increased as more incorrect answers were given from 15 to 450 volts. Each time a shock was given a pre-recorded sound played indicating Mr Wallis in varying degrees of pain, until after 315 volts there was an eerie silence. Each time they tried to stop Milgram himself encouraged the participant to continue (this was the authority figure). Subject...
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...PY177M1 January 20, 2016 The Milgram Experiment: Obedience The Milgram Experiment were based on obedience to authority figures. A series of notable social psychology experiment conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. It measured the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure when put in unconformable position. Stanley asked himself “How far will a human being go if an anonymous authority orders him to torture or even to kill a fellow human”. As many of the participants were approached in the streets to become a part of the experiment. Many of the participants didn’t know what was going to go on during the experiment. As they were pulled into the area where the experiment was being performed. After the psychologist is done explaining the experiment they would start the experiment. Two participants were done at the same time but one of the participants was a part of the experiment which was the person that wasn’t the teacher in the experiment. The teacher would sit outside of this other room and read off a set of words and the person in the room had to answer them correctly or get an electric shock as a punishment. With ever answer wrong the shock went up in voltage. The voltage started about 15 volts and went up to 300 volts. If you reached 300 volts and the person wasn’t done answering all the question right, than the person would just kept getting shocked at 300 volts. As the experiment went on a common trend appeared...
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...Abstract Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, performed one of the most famous studies conducted at the time, in 1963. Stanley Milgram was very interested in the effects of interactions on behavior. In his experiment, he wanted to test the limits of the participant's compliance and obedience, under conditions of extreme distress. Milgram wanted to have a better understanding of how far people would go to obey orders given by someone in an authority role; even if that meant that, the orders contradicted their personal beliefs. The subjects of the study believed they had to obey what the authority figure's guidance that was conveyed to them. The guidelines were to shock other participants ultimately if they answered incorrectly; even silence was an incorrect answer. The experiment, to this day, is one that is studied, because it showed how many people, no matter gender, economic stance, or race, would inflict pain, and even death, to obey someone who has more authority than they do. The subjects were given a set of rules to abide by. The study was to see how the subjects responded to the effects of punishment on memory. The Milgram Experiment There were two main pieces of this study; there was the "learner" and the "experimenter". There was a list of teachers, the teachers were told to give shocks to the learners, the shocks were not real, and however, the participants did not know this. The participants thought the students were being shocked...
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...The Milgram Experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram who was a psychologist at Yale University. He invented this study to explore the issue of authority. Milgram wanted to understand obedience. Milgram asked the question, “What is there in human nature that allows an individual to act without any restraints whatsoever that allows us to act inhumane and not limited by compassion or conscience.” This experiment allowed insight into the topic of conflict between obedience to authority and conscience. How far would people proceed in obeying authority if it involved hurting another person? In order to conduct this experiment Milgram used male subjects from 20 to 50 years old. The authority figure told the subjects they were testing to see if people...
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...Describe a Study: The Milgram Experiment of Destructive Obedience Systemic obedience of institutional authority can result in destructive consequences. In the events of the Holocaust, the atrocities committed in concentration camps would not have occurred on such a mass if not for the obedience of Hitler’s forces (Milgram, 1963). For the purpose of observing the particularly destructive effects of obedient behavior, Stanley Milgram of Yale University conducted a controlled experiment in 1961 to observe what influences obedient responses to the commands of a figure in authority (Milgram, 1963). Summary of Experimental Procedure Subjects 40 male subjects were used in this experiment. They ranged from the ages of 20 to 50. They also came from a range of occupations and different educational levels (Milgram, 1963). The subjects were not informed about the true motive of the experiment. They were told that the...
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...April 23, 2015 Stanley Milgram Are Germans more Obedient than others to execute orders such as genocide or shock someone at an extreme voltage?(Meyer) Is Milgram’s experiment applicable to literature we see? I believe that this experiment proved that people execute actions everyday just following orders. The Milgram experiment was a test the “German’s are different” theory, which was a theory by Milgram that German’s actually were more obedient than the average person(Cherry). “Learners” were told specific word pairs by the “teacher” and would read one word then list multiple answers.(Cherry) If the learner chose the wrong answer then he was electrocuted. The experiment consisted of a range of shocks from 5 to...
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...“The Experiments That Still Shock” by Carol Tavris, The Wall Street Journal In 1963, Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment on “obedience to authority” just 2 years after the Nazi Adolf Eichmann had claimed in his trial he was “only following orders” in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. After World War 2, Milgram, along with many other people, was curious as to how many normal, everyday citizens would obey authority even when directly hurting another human being. About 780 Participants arrived at the Yale lab under the pretense they were to be part of an experiment studying the effects of punishment on learning. Three people were involved in each trial, one assigned the role the ‘teacher’, and the other the ‘learner’, and the experiment conductor (who was nothing but a man in a white lab coat). The learner, seated in an adjoining room as the teacher, was to receive an electric shock from the teacher whenever an error was made when reciting a pair of words. The teacher was to press a lever on a machine that had varying intensities of voltages. The shock levels were labeled “SLIGHT SHOCK” to “DANGER-SEVERE SHOCK” and finally “XXX”. With each error the learner made, the voltage intensity was to increase. What the participants didn’t know was that the learner was a confederate of Milgrams who didn't receive any shocks. He shouted and pleaded to be released with each “shock” according to a prearranged script. If the participant-teacher wanted to leave, the experimenter...
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...The Milgram Experiment proved that people tend to obey and take orders from an authority figure – even if it means killing an innocent human being. As the participant goes higher in the amount of voltage they should administer, they would always turn to the scientist (the authority figure dressed in a lab coat) and ask if they should continue. As always, the scientist would tell them that it is “required for them to continue the experiment.” Even though the subject’s morality and their conscious differs from what the scientist is telling them to do, they continued with the experiment, obeying the scientist out of “respect” because it was for “the greater good.” This also shows conformity. They wanted to please the scientist and to do what was expected of them, even though it was questionable. Despite hearing the screams and protests through the speakers, most of the subjects would not stop giving the shocks....
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...To start, both of these experiments are quite disturbing and yet interesting as to how people react or act in situations if given the opportunity. I actually looked up the Milgram and the Zimbardo experiments. I watched videos of both actually. I think Milgram wanted to prove that the prison guards, doctors, etc..., did not necessarily think that they were to blame for the atrocities that occurred in concentration camps, but were in their minds “just following orders”. In his experiments people issued shocks to others in increasing intervals of strength without any concern for the pain being inflicted. They were just following orders. Zimbardo turned a Stanford University Basement into a prison with half the participants as guards and the other half as inmates. The level of cruelty that the “guards” sank to is truly amazing. Both sides of the experiment literally assimilated to the roles given. It is my belief that the subjects in these experiments used the position of following orders or authority to let the ID free and do things they would never consider in normal society with rules and laws. In Milgram’s study the ones issuing the shocks probably did enjoy or get pleasure from what they were doing. Literally they let the “order” to shock someone give them pleasure. It would be interesting to know if any of the “shockers” had become sexually excited during this experiment. Zimbardo’s experiment really shows how the ego was affected by the experiment. Guards became abusive and...
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...The Lord of the Flies and “Milgram Experiment” The lost boys in The Lord of the Flies have many similarities with the test subjects of the “Milgram Experiment”. The boys will listen to whoever the strongest leader is and obey them no matter what, and the subjects in the “Milgram Experiment” do the same. Obedience is focused on power and respect and many people, fictional or real, will listen to the strongest ruler due to their influence over them.The Lord of the Flies and the Obedience to Authority Experiments have many similarities, especially the idea of obedience to leaders and why some people follow orders without thinking. The boys in the Lord of the Flies were only influenced by the power of their leader. Whether they thought Ralph...
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...1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a famous research study called the obedience study. It showed that people have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures. Milgram’s Obedience Study Milgram told his forty male volunteer research subjects that they were participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. He assigned each of the subjects to the role of teacher. Each subject was told that his task was to help another subject like himself learn a list of word pairs. Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to give the learner an electric shock by flipping a switch. The teacher was told to increase the shock level each time the learner made a mistake, until a dangerous shock level was reached. Throughout the course of the experiment, the experimenter firmly commanded the teachers to follow the instructions they had been given. In reality, the learner was not an experiment subject but Milgram’s accomplice, and he never actually received an electric shock. However, he pretended to be in pain when shocks were administered. Prior to the study, forty psychiatrists that Milgram consulted told him that fewer than 1 percent of subjects would administer what they thought were dangerous shocks to the learner. However, Milgram found that two-thirds of the teachers did administer even the highest level of shock, despite believing that the learner was suffering great pain and distress. Milgram believed that the teachers had acted...
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...How and why Milgram’s research on obedience is relevant to our understanding of the conduct of soldiers in times of war. The report aims to: • Summarise the main points of Milgram’s experiment. • Summarise the results and what they mean. • Highlight why Milgram’s research is relevant to our understanding of the conduct of soldiers in times of war. Background: The aim of Milgram’s (1963) study was to investigate what levels of obedience would be shown when participants were told by a figure of authority to deliver electric shocks to another person. Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities such as some of the acts carried out by Germans in WWII. The participant took the role of ‘teacher’, also present was the ‘learner’ who was in on the deception and knew that they would not receive any real shocks and the experimenter. The ‘teacher’ was told that the ‘learner’, who was in another room, would have words to memorise and if they got the words wrong they would receive an electric shock that was administered by the ‘teacher’. The shock generator in front of the ‘teacher’ ran from 15 volts to 450 volts with descriptive words such as ‘slight shock’ for 15 volts, ‘intense shock’ for 225 volts and ‘XXX’ for 435 volts (Banyard, 2010, p. 69). As the ‘learner’ began to get words wrong the ‘teacher’ began to shock, as the shocks increased the ‘learner’ began to shout out in pain. At these points when...
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