Stanley Milgram Experiment
Megan Randolph
RC 250
Marcia Clay
11/3/09
A Summary of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Study
Stanley Milgram, a professor of social psychology, conducted a research study beginning in July of 1961. This research measured the willingness of participants to either obey or disobey an authority figuring giving them on a conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram set up this experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person just because an experimental scientist ordered him to. Virtually one thousand adults were observed in this experiment, and several different conditions were launched to find a limit to which the candidate would continue the order …show more content…
The fictitious story given to the "teachers" was that the experiment was intended to explore the effects of punishment for incorrect responses on learning behavior. The participants were first paid to participate in the experiment making it feel more real. A progression of unrevealed subjects in their roles as teacher were given simple memory tasks in the form of reading lists of two word pairs. The teacher then asked the "learner" to read them back and was instructed to administer a shock by pressing a button each time the learner made a mistake. It was understood that the electric shocks were to be of increased by 15 volts in intensity for each mistake the "learner" made during the experiment, while the actor/learner screamed and yelled louder every time. The participant believed that for every wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In Fact, there was a pre-determined script that the teacher had no idea about. The idea that the subject thought these shocks were actually taking place, and they continued to follow the orders, is where the experiment became …show more content…
This condition was titled remote feedback, and was revealed to be easier for the participant to continue the experiment without remorse. The second condition is where the voice protests were commenced and the teacher could hear the victim’s complaints titled voice feedback. Although they could hear the learner, the victims were still easily put out of mind because they could not be seen. The third experimental condition, Milgram placed the victim in the same room as the participant, being both visible and audible, the proximity. When the victim was close it was more difficult to exclude him, making it more difficult for the participants to obey the experimenter. Lastly, the fourth condition was the touch proximity, where the victim received a shock only when his hand rested on the shock plate. When the victim would refused to place his hand on the plate, the experimenter would order the participant to come in physical contact with the victim and force his hand onto the plate. “ The Mechanism of denial can no longer be brought into play” in the proximity conditions. It’s not as easy to harm a person when you can visually see the pain one is
RC 250
Marcia Clay
11/3/09
A Summary of Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Study
Stanley Milgram, a professor of social psychology, conducted a research study beginning in July of 1961. This research measured the willingness of participants to either obey or disobey an authority figuring giving them on a conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram set up this experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person just because an experimental scientist ordered him to. Virtually one thousand adults were observed in this experiment, and several different conditions were launched to find a limit to which the candidate would continue the order …show more content…
The fictitious story given to the "teachers" was that the experiment was intended to explore the effects of punishment for incorrect responses on learning behavior. The participants were first paid to participate in the experiment making it feel more real. A progression of unrevealed subjects in their roles as teacher were given simple memory tasks in the form of reading lists of two word pairs. The teacher then asked the "learner" to read them back and was instructed to administer a shock by pressing a button each time the learner made a mistake. It was understood that the electric shocks were to be of increased by 15 volts in intensity for each mistake the "learner" made during the experiment, while the actor/learner screamed and yelled louder every time. The participant believed that for every wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In Fact, there was a pre-determined script that the teacher had no idea about. The idea that the subject thought these shocks were actually taking place, and they continued to follow the orders, is where the experiment became …show more content…
This condition was titled remote feedback, and was revealed to be easier for the participant to continue the experiment without remorse. The second condition is where the voice protests were commenced and the teacher could hear the victim’s complaints titled voice feedback. Although they could hear the learner, the victims were still easily put out of mind because they could not be seen. The third experimental condition, Milgram placed the victim in the same room as the participant, being both visible and audible, the proximity. When the victim was close it was more difficult to exclude him, making it more difficult for the participants to obey the experimenter. Lastly, the fourth condition was the touch proximity, where the victim received a shock only when his hand rested on the shock plate. When the victim would refused to place his hand on the plate, the experimenter would order the participant to come in physical contact with the victim and force his hand onto the plate. “ The Mechanism of denial can no longer be brought into play” in the proximity conditions. It’s not as easy to harm a person when you can visually see the pain one is