Milgram Experiment Essay

In May, 1962 an experiment was done at Yale University. The experiment was called Milgram’s Obedience to Authority. The participants of the experiment was forty males. The male’s ages were between twenty and fifty years old. Along, with the age differences they all had different occupations.
Once the experiment begins the learner is tied down to a chair. The teacher is then put in a room opposite of the learner and is not able to see the learner. The purpose of the learner is to remember the line that the teacher reads to them and repeat it back. The teacher can only read through the first page once. Then the teacher would read the second page which asked questions about what word goes next in the line. If the learner answers correctly the
The first teacher stopped and said he would give his check back because the learner was complaining about his heart hurting him and the teacher didn’t want to chance anything. The second teacher stopped because he didn’t know anything about the experiment and didn’t know if it would injure the learner so he stopped. Another man didn’t stop until the experimenters told him to and he said the reason he didn’t stop to begin with, was because one of the experimenters kept telling him to continue. Afterwards it was told to the teachers what the experiment was really about and that the person wasn’t really being shocked it was all part of the experiment. In the video it said that the teacher was a necessity placed in a difficult predicament to see how well the teacher could listen to instructions given by the learner telling him to stop shocking him. The outcome was powerful reactions of tension and emotional strain out of a substantial portion of the teachers.
I personal think that the experiment was a successful outcome. It showed how well the teacher actually listened to the learners protest to stop. Though, I was surprised by the fifty percent of participants that continued the experiment all the way through until the very end. I was also surprised that they asked the participants to take a questionnaire before the experiment to show how nervous or tense they got. But, I also understood why they did that because they were just getting more information for the experiment to see if the participant could follow through with the experiment until the