Preview

Milgram's Obedience Experiment

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
236 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Milgram's Obedience Experiment
In his obedience study, Stanley Milgram set up a test that involved two people, one to be the teacher and the other to be the student. In this experiment, the teacher would read off a list of words to the student and have him recite the missing words back, and every time the student got a word wrong the teacher would inflect an electrical shock. The teachers believed that the experiment was to test learning conditions, when the test was studying obedience. The student was part of Milgram’s test and the teacher was the subject. As the teacher went through the test and shocked the student, the man who was the student complained about heart and chest pains from the shock. While some people refused to continue the test when they heard the man complain

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Milgram's Experiment brings up the point that people under the pressure of other, will more likely obey orders even if it goes against their moral beliefs. In "To Obey of Not to Obey", most of the soldiers obeyed their superiors because they were taught to do so. Similarly in Migram's Experient, the "teachers" obeyed when the experimenter pressured the subject to continue with the shocks. This can be related to Slaughterhouse Five because the German soldiers are under the command of their superiors who are requiring them to take American prisoners. This pressure was passed down from the German soldiers who demanded the American soldiers to clean up the charred remains of dead civilians after the bombing of Dresden.…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory 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
  • Good Essays

    Nearly half a century after they were conducted, Milgram’s (1963, 1965, 1974) obedience studies remain among psychology’s most widely known and most often discussed experiments. Briefly, under the guise of a learning study, an experimenter instructed participants to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to a ‘‘learner’’ when the learner made mistakes on a memory task. Although in reality no shocks were delivered, participants were instructed to start with a 15-volt shock for the learner’s first mistake and to increase the voltage in 15-volt increments for each successive mistake. In the basic procedure (Experiment 5), participants could hear the learner’s vocal protests and demands to be set free through the wall that separated…

    • 156 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    draft5 1

    • 1345 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “The Perils of Obedience” was an experiment done by Stanley Milgram concentrating on the conflict between obedience to the authority and individual’s self. Milgram created a threatening shock generator with starting level of 30 volts and expanding up to 450 volts. The experiment was set up with having an experimenter, a participant who was the subject, and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. The teachers were told to ask questions from the learners and every time they gave a wrong answer, an electric shock was given and was increased 15 volt on each wrong answer. As the experiment advanced, the participants heard the learners argue to be discharged and complained about their heart condition.…

    • 1345 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Evaluate Milgram's Study

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages

    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
  • 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
  • Good 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
  • 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
  • Satisfactory Essays

    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.…

    • 225 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Prior to the experiments, Milgram sought predictions about the outcome from psychiatrists, college sophomores, middle-class adults, graduate students and faculty in behavioral sciences. All thought the teachers would refuse to obey the experimenter. The majority of the teachers would show concern once the learners began showing signs of discomfort. However, 60 percent of them followed the orders until the end, administering shocks to the learner up to 450 volts. (para. 27) The findings were dismissed as having no relevance to “ordinary” people considering the subjects used were students of Yale. Colleagues of Milgram claimed that these students were highly aggressive and competitive when provoked. (para. 27)…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    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…

    • 1583 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    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).…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Obedience and Authority Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote an article, "The Perils of Obedience," which documented his unique experiment about obedience and authority. The purpose was to observe to what extent an ordinary citizen would compromise his or her conscience when ordered to inflict increasing pain to another human. The experiment consisted of three people: a teacher and learner chosen at random, and a scientist. Once all three were acquainted, the scientist explained that the goal of the experiment was to research the effects of discipline. Thereafter, the learner was strapped to a chair with an electrode attached to their wrist.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays