The experimenter, teacher, and the learner were all in the same room, the learner would be strapped to a chair. The experimenter explains to the learner that “[h]e will be read lists of simple word pairs, and that he will be tested on his ability to remember the second word of a pair when he hears the first one again,” the experimenter also advises the learner that “[w]henever he makes an error, he (learner) will receive electric shocks of increasing intensity” (632); the intensity of the shocks ranged from slight shock to a severe shock. After the teacher read out loud the simple pairs or words, the experimenter would read out the first word of the pair, and the learner would attempt to answer with the second word of the pair. The teacher participated in the experiment not knowing that learner was an actor and that the learner was not receiving any electric shocks. Stanley Milgram explains that“[t]he point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measureable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim” (632). Milgram found that participants were more than willing to go pass what was comfortable to them to please authority; “Milgram found that few participants could…
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…
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…
Authority and Identity usually lead to compliances and conformity and these techniques usually occur in real life situation too. To test out if human being would lose their moral and social values when they lost their individuality, Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in 1971 to see how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life (Zimbardo - Stanford Prison Experiment, 2008). This experiment was called The Stanford Prison Experiment and it was conducted at Stanford University. While the real life situation that was being mentioned, connected and relevant to Zimbardo’s experiment is the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. Abu Ghraib prison was a U.S. Army detention center for…
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…
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.…
The Stanley Milgram experiment takes normal everyday people and gives them orders to do horrible…
The teacher is to give a pair of words to the learner, then the teacher is to repeat the first word and the learner is to repeat the second word that matches from the list of choice the teacher gives. For every question the learner answers incorrectly, he is to receive a “mild” electric shock, starting from 15 volts and increased by 15 per wrong answer up a maximum shock of 450 volts. The teachers did not know that there were no shocks and the procedure was perfectly safe. For every time a participant would refuse to continue on with the experiment, the scientist would give four different orders every time. The first order is “please continue,” the second is “the experiment requires you to continue,” the third is “it is absolutely essential that you continue,” and the last is “you have no other choice but to continue” (McLeod,…
Stanley Milgram’s experiment was conducted to justify the acts of Nazi killings during the World War II. Milgram’s general findings after the experiments: Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figures even to the extent of hurting or killing other people. He claims that people can act inhumanely with limited feelings and compassion under blind obedience to authority. On his experiment, most of the participants continued to inflict the punishment all the way to the highest level when assured that they are not held responsible. Some participants went on and follow the commanded actions even if they seemed in conflict and against their conscience.…
The first experiments included a group of undergraduates from Yale. The experiments involved three subjects: the experimenter, the “teacher” and the “learner”. The teacher would read off a series of words. The learner, who is strapped to an electric chair, would be required to remember the words associated to one another. If the learner did not correctly respond the teacher would be required to administer an electric shock ranging from 15 to 450 volts. (para. 5)…
While the test subject is in complete control over when the experiment can be stopped based on their own level of morals, it would not be considered proper to put the test subject in an environment like this that could be perceived as “hostile” without their complete knowledge of their part in the experiment. It would be impossible to inform the test subjects about the extremely stressful experiment they would be taking place in without informing them on exactly what they would be doing, and in this experiment, the discretion of the test was important to get clear and true results. Another immoral part of Milgram’s experiment was the severe psychological stress imposed on the applicants. Numerous participants stated that they felt extremely uncomfortable about what they were expected to do, although a sizable amount of the members in the primary trials subsequently pronounced that they felt vastly pleased to have been chosen to take part in the experiment. Another immoral aspect of the experiment was the fact that the test subject was not expressly given the right to withdrawal from the experiment, and were continuously given orders to continue the experiment. Milgram claimed that in this experiment strict orders were essential to…
If the learner got a question wrong, he would get an electric shock, but he would fake the pain to trick the teacher into believing that he or she is inflicting pain. The purpose of the experiment was to determine how long the subject would continue with the simple order to “continue please” and administer the fake electric shock knowingly causing pain to the actor (Milgram 82).…
Milgram's experiment in 1960 by social psychologist Dr. Stanely Milgram's (1963, 1965) was a controversial experiment. He researched the effect of authority on obedience. I don't think the scientific community overreacted to this experiment because it is unethical to reduce subjects to "twitching shuttering wrecks". Though the human mind is amazing strong we still do not know its breaking point. For interviewers to carry out the kind of experiment they did, they have to be willing to face the consequences of the experiment which could be a permanent damaged mental state. I do believe we need to do experiments like this as the outcome was very eye opening but it has to be better regulated and the background and methods of experimentation clearly…
Throughout our nation's history, we have taken part in many unethical means of gaining information or knowledge. Some of the more famous cases include, The Milgram Obedience and Authority experiment, The Stanford Prison experiment, and of course the Abu Ghraib scandal involving our own U.S. soldiers. While two of these instances were not intended to cause physical harm, they were all branded unethical due to the extent of not only the physical abuses that took place, but the painful psychological impact it left on those involved.…
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…