In this assignment I will be comparing and contrasting the terms conformity and obedience. I will also be answering the following questions: 1) Does research into conformity and obedience explain the horrors of war atrocities‚ such as The Holocaust‚ the Mi Lai Massacre in Vietnam or the abuse suffered by Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison? 2) Does research into independent behavior suggest these atrocities could be averted in future conflicts? Conformity is a form of social influence in which
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An obedience experiment directed by Milgram (1974) involved the participant in a laboratory environment as the role of a teacher‚ pertaining to the effects of punishment on learning (Gibson 2011). Participants were deceived by being told that as part of the experiment they were required to administer an electric shock to the ‘learner’. The participants’ had observed the ‘learners’ (who were confederate in the experiment) in an adjoining room being secured to a chair. The participants were informed
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Stanley Milgram is a 20th century social psychologist who conducted research into social influence and persuasion. His experiments on obedience remain some of the most frequently cited and controversial in the history of the field. Brown‚ R. (1986)‚ “Social psychologist Stanley Milgram researched the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative--even when acting against their own better judgment and desires.” He argues that
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There were anchors that were added to the machine to make the appearance of it to be more frightening ("Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority”). The earner would be strapped into the chair and was given a list of words to memorize and after some time the teacher would test him ("Saul McLeod”). At a given point during the questioning process the actor would refuse to answer
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Obedience is omnipresent; it is difficult to differentiate between obedience and conformity‚ therefore it is a complicated subject of social psychology. However‚ Stanley Milgram was devoted to understand the phenomena of obedience‚ and created a dramatic masterpiece. Interested in many different aspects of life‚ Stanley Milgram was an influential key figure in psychology. However his work on the field of obedience is respected and still exiting for both psychologists and lay people. The aim of this
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justified gradually over several decades. Milgram (1974) argued the fact that in an obedience situation‚ people tend to pass all sense of responsibility onto the authoritative figure. Milgram said that people are in an autonomous state when taking their responsibility but move into an agentic state when passing this responsibility to an authoritative figure; this shift in state of mind is called an agentic shift. For example in Milgram shock experiment (1963)‚ many participants reported after they were
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Obedience is when an individual responds to an order from an authority figure. A key study that has looked into research is one carried out by Milgrams in 1963. The aim of the experiment was investigate whether ordinary people will obey a legitimate authority figure even when required to injure an innocent person. Milgrams recruited 40 male participants by advertising for volunteers to take part in his study. Each participant would be paid $4.50. The experiment consisted of one ‘real’ participant
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What makes ethical behaviors sometimes immoral? Obedience is one of the really good morals that everyone should have‚ one of the things that people are looking for in people around them and that parents wants their children to have. This valuable moral as much as it is really valued and wanted‚ sometimes is not the best thing to do; sometimes disobeying or saying “NO” is much better‚ but this does not mean that it lost its value and become unethical; rather it means that it is like any other thing
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The article‚ Behavioral Study of Obedience written by Dr. Stanley Milgram of Yale University was published in 1963 by the American Psychological Association (Milgram‚ 1963). In this article we explore one of the most widely studied articles of obedience in psychology. Dr. Milgram conducted an experiment that focused on the connection between the conscience and obedience to authority or commands. The first of many experiments took place in July 1961 after the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann
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Conformity‚ compliance‚ and obedience impact the lives of groups and individuals more often than most realize. These social influences may encompass either destructive‚ constructive‚ or neutral behaviors (Kassin‚ 2015). Why people behave the way they do when in groups is worth exploring. Humans exert social control over others through various forms of manipulation without them realizing they are being influenced. Social influence includes individuals changing their behaviors to adhere to existing
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