Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?
Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?
The Milgram Experiment Is a very well-known experiment in social psychology .The concept was first started in 1963 by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgren in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in Behavioral Study of Obedience published a paper, later also in his 1974 publication Obedience to Authority: Discussed in the An Experimental View.
The main purpose of this experiment is testing the subjects issued against conscience commands in the face of authority how much power can they do to refuse it. The subjects were chosen from the people from 25-50 who will get 4.5 dollars per hour. Meanwhile the location was at the basement of the old college campus and there were …show more content…
two rooms which were separated. [1] Following the style of the original experiments, the participants were invited to administer a series of word association memory tests to the (female) virtual human representing the stranger. When she gave an incorrect answer, the participants were instructed to administer an ‘electric shock’ to her, increasing the voltage each time. She responded with increasing discomfort and protests, eventually demanding termination of the experiment. Of the 34 participants, 23 saw and heard the virtual human, and 11 communicated with her only through a text interface.
As far as I think, If this happened today I would definitely not go to join this experiment.
Because this is the challenge of human’s moral bottom lane. Back in the day, this experiment took place when the time was right after the World War II in order to find out "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" As a result, I would say this experiment was particularly discussing about the human’s moral bottom lane. First, I assume I was in that situation to a “teacher” I would never touch that button to shock those people. For the simple reason is that they did not do something bad to me and I need to shock them and no matter how much they will pay me to participate this experiment. According to the resources, [2] 5% of a sample average American adult men were willing to punish another person with increasingly higher voltages of electric shock all the way to the maximum (450 volts) when ordered to by an experimenter who did not possess any coercive powers to enforce his commands. When asked to predict the outcome of the obedience experiment, neither a group of Yale seniors nor a group of psychiatrists were even remotely close to predicting the actual result: Their predicted obedience rates were 1.2% and .125%, respectively. What’s more, The dramatic demonstration that people are much more prone to obey the orders of a legitimate authority than one might have expected remains an enduring insight, but one that is in need of some qualification: Milgram did indeed find drastic underestimations of full obedience (with 3% of the subjects, at the most, expected to obey), [3] but others have obtained findings suggesting that greater accuracy in predicting the outcome of an obedience experiment is possible. Milgram also showed how difficult it is for people to translate their intentions into actions even when moral principles might be at stake, and that momentary situational pressures and
norms can exert a surprising degree of influence on people 's behavior. According to Milgram, they wield their power through the unexpected amount of inhibitory anxiety generated by their breach.
Although someone can question that how was this experiment making any differences between Milgram’s subjects and those of the Nazis under Hitler, this experiment given by Milgram did clearly contribute to a continued awareness of the Holocaust and to attempts at understanding its causes. Citations:
[1]: Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, Swapp D, Guger C, et al. (2006) A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments.
[2]: Blass, Thomas Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Issue: Volume 60(3), March 1991, p 398–413
Copyright: © 1991 by the American Psychological Association
Publication Type: [Personality Processes and Individual Differences]
ISSN: 0022-3514
Accession: 00005205-199103000-00008
[3]: ( Kaufmann & Kooman, 1967; Mixon, 1971)
The Milgram Experiment Is a very well-known experiment in social psychology .The concept was first started in 1963 by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgren in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in Behavioral Study of Obedience published a paper, later also in his 1974 publication Obedience to Authority: Discussed in the An Experimental View.
The main purpose of this experiment is testing the subjects issued against conscience commands in the face of authority how much power can they do to refuse it. The subjects were chosen from the people from 25-50 who will get 4.5 dollars per hour. Meanwhile the location was at the basement of the old college campus and there were …show more content…
two rooms which were separated. [1] Following the style of the original experiments, the participants were invited to administer a series of word association memory tests to the (female) virtual human representing the stranger. When she gave an incorrect answer, the participants were instructed to administer an ‘electric shock’ to her, increasing the voltage each time. She responded with increasing discomfort and protests, eventually demanding termination of the experiment. Of the 34 participants, 23 saw and heard the virtual human, and 11 communicated with her only through a text interface.
As far as I think, If this happened today I would definitely not go to join this experiment.
Because this is the challenge of human’s moral bottom lane. Back in the day, this experiment took place when the time was right after the World War II in order to find out "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" As a result, I would say this experiment was particularly discussing about the human’s moral bottom lane. First, I assume I was in that situation to a “teacher” I would never touch that button to shock those people. For the simple reason is that they did not do something bad to me and I need to shock them and no matter how much they will pay me to participate this experiment. According to the resources, [2] 5% of a sample average American adult men were willing to punish another person with increasingly higher voltages of electric shock all the way to the maximum (450 volts) when ordered to by an experimenter who did not possess any coercive powers to enforce his commands. When asked to predict the outcome of the obedience experiment, neither a group of Yale seniors nor a group of psychiatrists were even remotely close to predicting the actual result: Their predicted obedience rates were 1.2% and .125%, respectively. What’s more, The dramatic demonstration that people are much more prone to obey the orders of a legitimate authority than one might have expected remains an enduring insight, but one that is in need of some qualification: Milgram did indeed find drastic underestimations of full obedience (with 3% of the subjects, at the most, expected to obey), [3] but others have obtained findings suggesting that greater accuracy in predicting the outcome of an obedience experiment is possible. Milgram also showed how difficult it is for people to translate their intentions into actions even when moral principles might be at stake, and that momentary situational pressures and
norms can exert a surprising degree of influence on people 's behavior. According to Milgram, they wield their power through the unexpected amount of inhibitory anxiety generated by their breach.
Although someone can question that how was this experiment making any differences between Milgram’s subjects and those of the Nazis under Hitler, this experiment given by Milgram did clearly contribute to a continued awareness of the Holocaust and to attempts at understanding its causes. Citations:
[1]: Slater M, Antley A, Davison A, Swapp D, Guger C, et al. (2006) A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments.
[2]: Blass, Thomas Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Issue: Volume 60(3), March 1991, p 398–413
Copyright: © 1991 by the American Psychological Association
Publication Type: [Personality Processes and Individual Differences]
ISSN: 0022-3514
Accession: 00005205-199103000-00008
[3]: ( Kaufmann & Kooman, 1967; Mixon, 1971)