Devin Huennerkopf
Mrs. Gumina
English III
3 March 2015
Milgram Experiment
What would you do if your boss asked you to do something that inflicts pain on another human? Would you still do it? Keep in mind, if you did not comply you would be fired. This concept was studied by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He composed an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Stanley Milgram conducted this experiment because of his curiosity with World War II. Adolf Hitler gave orders to kill millions, and his army completed this cruel act of killing innocent people. Was it because of this concept obedience to authority? Even though obedience is being respectful there must be a point when obedience is to much, for instance killing someone is very immoral and the worst crime. When a boss or elder is asking you to injure someone else for a job, you should know that this is not a good job or it is not one you should partake in. Stanley Milgram conducted this experiment to figure out if we as humans were weak under peer pressure. Hitler was one man that was extremely powerful, one who has that amount of power can be consumed by the power and do wrong, because of the thought of wanting more and more. Once you have hit that point in your life you may want to be the best, which inturn means you do what you must to get to the top, even if that means asking people to do dirty work for you. Hitler did that exactly, he was very
A while after receiving his doctorate, Milgram began studying the justifications of genocide, in particular the case of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was responsible for countless war crimes associated with the Nazis, however he claimed that him and all of his accomplices were simply following orders. A year after Eichmann’s trial, Milgram had set out to find the answer to his new found question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974). It is this underlying question that supported the entire experiment, essentially a study focusing on the conflicts between obedience to authority and personal conscience. As in, would you harm a person if you were told to do so by someone with high authority? The experiments began in July of 1961, at Yale University, when Milgram began a search for participants, by publishing a short advertisement in a newspaper.
The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1963 by Stanley Milgram in order to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and to personal conscience. The experiment consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, and who’s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. The roles of this experiment included a learner, teacher, and researcher. The participant was deemed the teacher and was in the same room as the researcher. The learner, who was also a paid actor, was put into the next room and strapped into an electric chair. The teacher administered a test to the learner, and for each question that was incorrect, the learner was to receive an electric shock by the teacher, increasing the level of shock each time. The shock generator ranged from
The Milgram Experiment conducted at Yale University in 1963, focused on whether a person would follow instructions from someone showing authority. Students (actors) were asked questions by the teachers (participants), if the students got the answer wrong they would receive a shock each higher than the previous. The shocks ranged from Slight shock (15v) to Danger! (300v) to XXX (450v). Stanley Milgram wanted to know if people would do things just because someone with authority told them to, even if it was hurting someone. I believe that the experiment was a good way to test the obedience of people
People can change in a position of power from being normal to crazed. In the milgram experiment uses students from yale university were used to show a relation between position of power and being evil, the experiment showed that there was a relation. Saul Mcleod conveys through the article "THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT" that people put in positions of power, are more likely to be cruel to the people they are in power of. The other experiment the stanford experiment was to see how many people would kill another person when instructed to someone of a higher stature. The article by Saul Mcleod shows how people are suseptable of murdering someone when another person is to blame. Both articles show that positions of power can make people do insane
Milgram (1963) conducted a study on obedience which investigated the extent people would obey to commands that involved harming individuals. There were 40 male participants from New Haven and the surrounding communities that partook in this study of learning and memory, at Yale University, by responding to a newspaper advert. The age range was between 20 and 50; and the participants’ occupation was diverse, ranging from unskilled to professional. Participants were paid $4.50 for entering the laboratory.
If a person of authority ordered you inflict a 15 to 400 volt electrical shock on another innocent human being, would you follow your direct orders? That is the question that Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University tested in the 1960’s. Most people would answer “no,” to imposing pain on innocent human beings but Milgram wanted to go further with his study. Writing and Reading across the Curriculum holds a shortened edition of Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” where he displays an eye-opening experiment that tests the true obedience of people under authority figures. He observes that most people go against their natural instinct to never harm innocent humans and obey the extreme and dangerous instructions of authority
The shockers were told they could walk out at and time and still get paid for their time. The viewer can see that the effect of orders from authority can control what people do. It is also shown that even if the test subjects can walk away from the experiment at any time, the influence of authority draws them away from doing so. In a nutshell, The Milgram Experiment Revisited delineates that authoritative figures can manipulate people to do things that they wouldn’t generally do, such as inflict pain on
The Milgram experiment was performed by the sociologist Stanley Milgram to discover the power of authority. In this experiment, Stanley was trying to demonstrate the willingness people have to follow orders from an authority figure. Even thought the results of this experiment were very surprising, I think that this kind of experiments would allows us to study and understand better the human’s nature. This experiment showed a side of human’s nature that was unknown by the scientistic community, and this is the reason why we need to perform more experiment like this one.
Another instance where V 's actions harm innocent people without caring was when he ordered innocent people to wear Guy Fawkes masks and march to the parliament to watch the explosion. These citizens could have been killed by the military officers who waited for orders to strike though no orders were given. If V was a revolutionary, he could have found the way of making a statement without risking the lives of the innocent citizens. His evil actions present him as a rebel against the government and his fellow citizens. He also states that ‘ 'violence could be used for good. ' ' V 's actions of not caring about the others were the same as compared to Stanley Milgram experiment actions. The subjects in this experiment were suffering, but the experimenter did nothing to relieve the students the pain. Instead, he urged the teachers to continue to torture the students knowing very well they were suffering from the high voltage. The teachers played the sadist role as they agreed as they completely obeyed the experimenter 's instructions. V 's evil actions also present him as a sadist by enjoying hurting people and killing the ones who were in charge of the experiments.
In 1984, after the trial of World War 2 criminal Adolph Eichmann, Stanley Milgram created an experiment where his starting hypothesis was to see if Germans had a character flaw which made them more obedient which correlated to the holocaust. He put an advertisement in the newspaper for volunteers for an educational experiment who would be paid on hour for $4.50. The experiment itself wasn’t real, but the participants didn’t know that it going in. The experiment was once they got into the “laboratory”, they picked from a hat and one would get “teacher” and the other “learner” but it is rigged so the participants will always get “teacher”. Jack William who is the experimenter takes the “learner” into a room to strap them into the shock machine while the “teacher” watches and at this time, the “teacher” is informed of the “learners” heart condition and Jack Williams pushes
In modern day, every new person in power has new ideas that they think will benefit the group in any sort of way. I was not sure how they got everyone to agree with their ideas because most of the time, the ideas are quite bizarre. In the United States, for example, though the citizens do get word on what they believe in, we have the president and his partners making the final decisions on the laws, but those laws may not be what each citizen wanted. This is shown through the Milgram Shock Experiment performed in 1961. There is the learners, who are sitting it a different room answering questions, and the teachers, who are obeying an authority figure, shocking the others depending on if they answer right or wrong. As a result of the experiment,
The teachers were not aware that the learner and investigator were working together and no shocks were administered as well as purposely given the wrong answers to pretend to be hurt. The purpose of this study was to determine how far humans will go when an authority figure orders them to hurt another person.
Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”
Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.
Discuss the Milgram Conformity Experiment, include ethical considerations, the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.