Summary Of The Power Of Situations, By Stanley Milgram

Authority would not be able to exist without obedience. There is a scarcely discernible difference between taking after indiscriminately and unreasonable refusal to comply with those in a significant position of specialist. Submission to expert is a genuine and effective constrain that ought to be comprehended and regarded so as to deal with every circumstance in the most ideal way.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment is one of the most important experiments ever administrated. The goal of the Milgram’s experiment was to find the desire of the participants to shock a learner in a controlled situation. When the volunteer would be ordered to shock the wrong answers of victims, Milgram was truly judging and studying how people respond to authority. He discovered something both
troubling and inspiring about the human race. The way Milgram was able to control the experiment shows how the human race can crash under pressure and follow instructions, no matter the consequences. Although, everything was not as it seemed when it came to results. Milgram used actors to act as the “victims” in the experiment, so no one was really being tortured. Even though he wasn’t really in control somehow the experimenter who was applying the shocks to the participant still was influenced to continue the process. He just wanted to illustrate that pressure can get to anyone in any situation. Pressure either bust pipes, or make diamonds. The three main specific roles that took place were the experimenter, the authority, and the teacher. After seeing these experiments and understanding the effect of it, it is much easier to take a few steps back and try to understand what kind of a situation a person was in before jumping into conclusions about their actions. Also, a great deal can be learned from the past research. Milgram study informed psychology in terms of theories on obedience and authority. However, everyone did all the work in the experiment while he just set back and gave commands to each one of them, and all they did was follow each one as they were ordered. Most importantly, the learner was strapped into a chair that resembles a miniature electric chair and was told he would have to learn a small list of word pairs. For each incorrect answer he would be given electric shocks to increase the intensity raging from 15 to 450 volts.
In the, “The Power of Situations” they are trying to illustrate how the power of people of situations can affect the decisions of people or how people react in different situations.
However, behaviors are practiced and is based on your surroundings and what you see in your everyday life within your environment. Also, even though you have power and you’re above everyone if you see something happening are you going to check on it or go about your business. As Lee Ross States, “While walking briskly to a meeting someone distance across a college campus, you come across a man slumped in a door way, asking for help. Will you offer it or continue on your way?” (Ross pp645)
“The Opinions and Social Pressure” Solomon Asch conducted an experiment that discovered the influences of a majority may have on an individual. The basic design of Asch’s study consisted of groups of seven to nine male college students seated in a classroom for a psychological experiment in visual judgment. The experimenter told them that they would be comparing the length of lines and he showed them two white cards below. The card on the left was the standard line to be judged and the card on the right shows the three comparison
lines.
The participants were asked to give their judgment aloud and they did so in the order in which they were seated. There was only one participant in each group and the rest were confederates of the experimenters. The real participant sat one from the end of a row, so all but one of the confederates gave answers before them. On certain situations the confederates were told to give the same incorrect answers. “Participants were set up in a specific order where they would answer last after all confederates have answered.” (Asch pp 672) There were three main trials, for the first two participants give the correct answer making the other participants feel ease with making their selection or answer. When forced into a situation they had to choose between the correct answer and the answer chosen by the other confederates. Asch states, “When the opposition was increased to two, the pressure became substantial: minority subjects now accept the wrong answer 13.6 percent of the time. Under the pressure of a majority of three, the subjects’ errors jumped to 31.8 percent.” Another situation where you can relate this type of actions to is the elevator conformity. Individuals were placed in an elevator and once the door closed they were told to turn the opposite way and the one individual who didn’t know anything about it would always follow the majority of others and turn the way in which everyone was rotating in.
Most importantly all of these psychology experiments relate to each other because they all demonstrate obedience and authority. Obedience is a type of social impact where some individual demonstrates in light of an immediate request from another person, who is typically an authority figure. It is expected that without such a request the individual would not have acted in that manner. Obedience occurs when an individual is told to do something by authority. While conformity transpires through social pressure. However, authority involves power and status. In this way, the individual giving the request has a more power than the individual getting the request.