Stanley Milgram vs. Diana Baumrind
Obedience: Does it have its limits?
When individuals abandon their own freedom for the benefit of the larger group, they are no longer individuals but products of conformity. Obedience to authority can become dangerous when morals and independent thought are stifled to the point that harm is inflicted upon another person. "The Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram reports on his controversial experiment that test how far individuals would go in obeying orders, even if carrying out those orders caused serious harm to others. This experiment caused a lot of controversy and one woman in particular believed that this experiment was immoral. Diana Baumrind's "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience" says that Milgram "entrapped" (329) his subjects and potentionally harmed his subjects mentally. Both authors are obviously concerned with ethics and validity but both see them in a very different light, which is apparent in their writings. Stanley Milgram, a teacher and scientist at Yale and Harvard universities, started a study that tested the obedience and morals of humans everywhere. In simple terms, the experiment's main point was to "test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply becase he was ordered to by an experimental scientist" (Milgram 317). Two subjects would enter the warehouse that the experiment was being held in, and they would be labeled either the "learner" or the "teacher". The subject that is named the "learner" is placed in a small room and hooked up to a type of electric chair. What he is told he must do, is to recite the second word of a word pair that is read by the "teacher." Whenever an error is made, and the "learner" says the wrong word, he gets "electric shocks of increasing intensity" (Milgram 318). The twist in this experiment is that the focus was not really on the "learner", but all on the "teacher". The "teacher" would be placed at a small desk with a "shock generator" (Milgram 318), that
When individuals abandon their own freedom for the benefit of the larger group, they are no longer individuals but products of conformity. Obedience to authority can become dangerous when morals and independent thought are stifled to the point that harm is inflicted upon another person. "The Perils of Obedience" by Stanley Milgram reports on his controversial experiment that test how far individuals would go in obeying orders, even if carrying out those orders caused serious harm to others. This experiment caused a lot of controversy and one woman in particular believed that this experiment was immoral. Diana Baumrind's "Review of Stanley Milgram's Experiments on Obedience" says that Milgram "entrapped" (329) his subjects and potentionally harmed his subjects mentally. Both authors are obviously concerned with ethics and validity but both see them in a very different light, which is apparent in their writings. Stanley Milgram, a teacher and scientist at Yale and Harvard universities, started a study that tested the obedience and morals of humans everywhere. In simple terms, the experiment's main point was to "test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply becase he was ordered to by an experimental scientist" (Milgram 317). Two subjects would enter the warehouse that the experiment was being held in, and they would be labeled either the "learner" or the "teacher". The subject that is named the "learner" is placed in a small room and hooked up to a type of electric chair. What he is told he must do, is to recite the second word of a word pair that is read by the "teacher." Whenever an error is made, and the "learner" says the wrong word, he gets "electric shocks of increasing intensity" (Milgram 318). The twist in this experiment is that the focus was not really on the "learner", but all on the "teacher". The "teacher" would be placed at a small desk with a "shock generator" (Milgram 318), that