The results of Milgram’s original study showed that every participant (100%) went to at least 300v, 65% of the participants went up to 450v.Many participants showed signs of distress such as some participants had nervous laughter, wept and begged to stop believing they had killed the learner. Most of the participants thought that the experiment was real.
Milgram came to the conclusion that people obey authority because of the situation they are in and not because they are evil. The study showed the power of authority over our behaviour. High levels of obedience were observed for various reasons such as the experiment was held at Yale university which is prestigious.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
In Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram designed an experiment that would involve an experimenter, a teacher, and a learner to determine how far obedience would play a role on willing participants. The purpose of Milgram’s experiment is to see how far a willing participant would go based on orders to continue knowing that the orders would result in another person’s pain. The experiment was set up so that two willing participants went into the experiment understanding that they were taking part in a memory and learning exercise. One of the two willing participants played the role as the…
- 632 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In Replicating Milgram (The Open University, 2014), Milgram explains how he set up his obedience experiment. His aim was to get a volunteer, a ‘teacher’ to inflict increasing amounts of pain, through electric shocks, to another volunteer a ‘learner’ and to see when the ‘teacher’ would turn to the researcher, the ‘authority figure’ and ask to stop. Unknown to ‘the teacher’, the ‘learner’ and the ‘authority figure’ were aware of the real purpose of the experiment; the ‘teacher’ was told it was to study the effect of punishment on learning, and genuinely thought that they were inflicting pain on the ‘learner’ sat in another room. It was this deception and the emotional stress it generated to the ‘teacher’ that prompted the ethical issues debate…
- 128 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
The Milgram experiment was not done appropriately due to certain procedure taken place in the experiment. This would include the dishonesty and stress placed upon the teacher. The experiment was dishonest because it attracted the public by saying, “a study of memory…
- 184 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
In Milgram’s article, he explains an experiment he designed to test whether the subjects of the experiment would refuse the orders of authority and follow…
- 1226 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
Over the past century, the field of Psychology has prospered, giving way to a more in depth knowledge and understanding of people’s social interactions with one another and what drives those connections. 20th century psychologist, Stanley Milgram, executed a series of Obedience to Authority test on random participants. As seen in the YouTube videos online and in class, Milgram’s study found that over 65% of the participants carried out the experiment, despite potentially hurting someone, due to the authority figure urging them to continue.…
- 529 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Milgram did a lab experiment, varying different situational pressures to see which had the greatest effect on obedience. He told 40 male volunteers that it was a study of how punishment affects learning. After drawing lots, the real participant was assigned the role of 'teacher'. The learner was a confederate. The teachers job was to administrate a learning task and deliver 'electric shocks' to the learner (in another room) if he got a question wrong. The shocks began at 15 volts and increased in increment of 15 volts to a maximum of 450 volts.…
- 799 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Before Milgram could publish his first book about his obedience experiment it found its way onto many medias from the New York Times, Life, ABC television, and the British Press. As the experiment became more celebrated one question continued to come up ‘had Milgram mistreated his subjects?’ Some psychologists, including Alan Elms and Bruno Bettelheim, think so after some of Milgrams subjects talked about having heart attacks and others talked about joining group therapy after the experiment. Since those reports came about the experiment has been attacked by psychologists and many others. “In Milgrams defiance,” says Parker, “Milgram would always highlight the results of post-experimental studies which never showed any traumatic…
- 560 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In 1963, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a series of social psychology experiments to study the conditions under which the people are obedient to authorities and personal conscience. The purpose of his experiment was to determine whether or not people were particularly obedient to the higher authority who instructed them to perform various acts even if they violate their own morals and ethics. It was one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology as it has inspired other researchers to explore what makes people question authority and more importantly, what leads them to follow orders. There were several replications of his experiment and the results were identical to those reported by Milgram about how…
- 1558 Words
- 7 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Milgram after advertising for volunteer participants were paid on arrival at the laboratory for their time. Participants, believing they were taking part in a memory experiment, were introduced in pairs to the experimenter where they ‘decided’ who was to be either a ‘teacher’ or a ‘learner’. In reality one of the ‘pairs’ of participants was a confederate and the chances were rigged so that the real participant was always the ‘teacher’. The experimenter explained that the ‘teacher’ would test the ‘learner’s’ memory, and when the ‘learner’ answered incorrectly would be asked to give him an electric shock. The ‘learner’ (who was the confederate) was strapped into a chair and wired up to the electric shock generator. So that the ‘teacher’ (the real participant) believed the electric shock generator was real, he was given a 45 volt electric shock. The electric shock generator had a row of switches marked from 15 to 450 volts in 15 volt increments with adjectives describing how severe the shock was, and 435 and 450 volts were labelled “XXX”.…
- 808 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
It is clearly shown when the difference in people's malicious behavior when shocking the students in the presence of authority and when given the freedom to choose the level of shock. The thesis of Milgram's essay was that obedience is a deeply ingrained behavior tendency; indeed, a potent impulse overriding reining ethics, sympathy and moral conduct is right on the dot. He also discusses the extreme willingness of man to obey authority at any length. This shows that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." This is proven by the fact that the majority of people were willing to shock students almost to the assumed point of death when instructed to do so by a…
- 585 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram expresses his findings of an experiment he conducted trying to prove the lengths people will go to be obedient to authority.…
- 407 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Yale University psychologist, Stanley Milgram, conducted an experiment in 1961 focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience" - that they were just following orders from their superiors. Milgram's experiment, which he told his participants was about learning, was to have participants (teacher) question another participant (learner), and when the learner got a question wrong the teacher would shock the learner. For every question wrong, the teacher would increase the amount of volts used in the shock. Of course the experiment was actually about obedience, the learner was an experimenter, and the shock was faked (McLeod). Milgram's was one of the first psychology experiments to use…
- 426 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. When some of the participants asked to stop, the experiment disallowed them. Although Milgrams claimed that participants knew they were free to leave at any time, some of the participants felt that they had no choice but to continue. Also Milgrams deceived the participants. He told the participants that they would be involved in an experiment of the effects of punishment on learning which was not the real purpose. Milgrams argued that if he had told them the real aim of the…
- 1063 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Obedience to authority is an aspect present in all societies throughout known history. For the entirety of this paper, obedience to authority will refer to any act a member of society performs that he or she was told to do by a position of higher authority. This paper will focus on the idea that members of society will follow commands that may go against their moral beliefs on the sole account that the commands come from a place of higher authority. This statement has been tested multiple times beginning with Stanley Milgram’s experiment in 1963, in which he set up a scenario that convinced people they were harming an individual they had met only minutes before through electrical…
- 1416 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays -
He set out to prove that individuals would obey with the request of authority figures. McLeod in his summary states, “Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.” (McLeod, The Milgram Experiment, 2007) The experiment was carried out by asking participants/teachers to deliver a series of electrical shocks to another person when a question was answered incorrectly. Also, if a mistake was made, the teacher could deliver an increased voltage level to the student. The general findings were that individuals who were going to disobey were those who responded not to the learner’s cries of pain but to the learners request to be set free. People are more likely to obey if there is an authority figure there to take the blame. “The power of legitimate, close-at-hand authorities is dramatically apparent in stories of those who complied with orders to carry out the atrocities of the Holocaust, and those who didn’t.” (Social Psychology) Milgram’s experiment further proves that obedience plays a major part in behavior and people are going to do what is necessary to fit…
- 743 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays