The Milgram experiment was an experiment in which subjects volunteered to shock another “volunteer”. The subjects, also known as “teachers”, were escorted into a lab where they were introduced to another “volunteer”, alluded to as the “learner”. At this time the teachers also met the researcher. After meeting the experimenter and the learner, the volunteers were encouraged to shock the “learner” if he or she did not correctly restate the words. As the learner failed to correctly restate the words, the shock level would be increased. To begin, the experiment found that when the psychological distance is increased between teacher and experimenter, the more likely the volunteer is to disobey the experimenter. The experiment also found that
The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1963 by Stanley Milgram in order to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and to personal conscience. The experiment consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, and who’s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. The roles of this experiment included a learner, teacher, and researcher. The participant was deemed the teacher and was in the same room as the researcher. The learner, who was also a paid actor, was put into the next room and strapped into an electric chair. The teacher administered a test to the learner, and for each question that was incorrect, the learner was to receive an electric shock by the teacher, increasing the level of shock each time. The shock generator ranged from
Milgram was interested on learning if people would hurt someone if given instructions to do so, Stanley Milgram recruited 40 males, ages ranging between 20 and 50 with jobs varying from unemployed to professionals. The participants drew straws to determine their positions (Learner or Teacher) although this was rigged so an actor was chosen as the learner every time and the volunteer as the teacher. As the learner got a question wrong the teacher would administer a shock, each wrong question the intensity of
People can change in a position of power from being normal to crazed. In the milgram experiment uses students from yale university were used to show a relation between position of power and being evil, the experiment showed that there was a relation. Saul Mcleod conveys through the article "THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT" that people put in positions of power, are more likely to be cruel to the people they are in power of. The other experiment the stanford experiment was to see how many people would kill another person when instructed to someone of a higher stature. The article by Saul Mcleod shows how people are suseptable of murdering someone when another person is to blame. Both articles show that positions of power can make people do insane
The Milgram Obedience Study was an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 to observe how far people would obey instructions that resulted in harming another individual. The experiment consisted of a “learner” engaging in a memory task and a “teacher” testing the “learner” on the task, administering electrical shocks to the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was given; the electric shocks started out small from 15 volts, labeled as “SLIGHT SHOCK”, all the way to 450 volts, labeled as “X X X”—of course, that was what the participant was told. The true purpose of the experiment was not disclosed until after the experiment and the “random selection” of who would be the “teacher” or “learner” was rigged so that the participant was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was always an actor. The shocks, naturally, were never given to the “learner”, and the “learner” gave responses that were scripted, both in answers to the questions and in responses to the shocks.
Milgram states, “two people come to a psychology laboratory to take part in a study of memory and learning” (WRAC 215). Because the participants were completely unaware of the true intentions of the experiment, Milgram believed they would act in a controlled way to generate proper results. This meant he could not ask for true consent for the experiment without jeopardizing the data. The importance of consent to Milgram was the lack there of it. While the test proceeded, more and more of the teachers started to break down from the stress. To compensate, Milgram explains that after the test was either finished or terminated, an effort was made to correct the psychological damage. Baumrind disagrees, having completely different view on the issue of consent. She argues that it is unfair to the participant to not receive their consent for an experiment that could be potentially traumatizing. Baumrind states that, “To guarantee that an especially sensitive subject leaves a stressful experimental experience in the proper state sometimes requires special clinical training” (WRAC 227). She continues by exclaiming that, “the subject has the right to expect that the psychologist with whom he is interacting has some concern for his welfare, and the personal attributes and professional skill to express his good will effectively” (WRAC 227). Baumrind does not believe Milgram was in any position to successful and safely completely the experiment because he made no
Stanley Milgram writes about his shocking experiment in “Perils of Obedience.” Milgram writes on the behaviors that the people had during the experiment. Milgram had an experiment that involves two people. One person was a student and the other a teacher. The student was strapped into an electric chair and was required to answer certain questions. The teacher asked a certain word, and the student must know the pair that goes with it. If the student answered the question incorrectly, the teacher must shock the student. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the volts increase. Milgram was expecting the teachers to back out of the experiment once they saw the student in pain for the first time, but surprisingly enough, more than sixty percent of the teachers obeyed the experimenter and continued on with the experiment, reaching up to four-hundred-fifty volts. After three times of the four-hundred-fifty volt shock, the experiment was called to halt.
Milgram conducts an experiment to examine the act of obeying, and shows concrete instances. He pressures the subjects to behave in a way conflicting with morality. In the experiment, the experimenter orders the subject to give increasing electro shocks to an accomplice, when he makes an error in a learning session. The situation makes the subject
There is a vast amount of research that continues to prove the importance of situational factors in determining human behavior. One of the most profound experiments that helped to prove situational importance was the study conducted by Stanley Milgram. In his article, “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram summarized his experiments on the effects of obedience to authority, even when the authority commanded the subject to harm another person.
The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous studies in psychology. It was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University. The purpose of the experiment was to study how far people would go in obeying an instruction from an authority figure if it involved hurting another person. Milgram wanted to study whether Germans were more obedient to authority as this was what people believed was the main reason for Nazi killings in World War II. 40 males were chosen to participate in the study, and were paid $4.50 for attending. The experiment was carried out as follows:
In 1984, after the trial of World War 2 criminal Adolph Eichmann, Stanley Milgram created an experiment where his starting hypothesis was to see if Germans had a character flaw which made them more obedient which correlated to the holocaust. He put an advertisement in the newspaper for volunteers for an educational experiment who would be paid on hour for $4.50. The experiment itself wasn’t real, but the participants didn’t know that it going in. The experiment was once they got into the “laboratory”, they picked from a hat and one would get “teacher” and the other “learner” but it is rigged so the participants will always get “teacher”. Jack William who is the experimenter takes the “learner” into a room to strap them into the shock machine while the “teacher” watches and at this time, the “teacher” is informed of the “learners” heart condition and Jack Williams pushes
where they had a man under cover and asked him questions. If he got the answer wrong he was
In “The Perils of Obedience”, social psychologist Stanley Milgram reveals the results of an experiment he performed trying to see if one would hurt another in order to obey authority. The experiments involved three subjects: the experimenter (authority), the teacher, and the learner. The experimenter only made sure that the experiment was performed, while the teacher had to read a series of words and the learner, strapped in an electric chair, had to remember the words read to him. If the learner incorrectly responded to the teacher, the learner would be given an electric shock. As the learner starts to give wrong answers the shock level rises.
Stanley Milgram conducted one of the most controversial psychological experiments of all time: the Milgram Experiment. Milgram was born in a New York hospital to parents that immigrated from Germany. The Holocaust sparked his interest for most of his young life because as he stated, he should have been born into a “German-speaking Jewish community” and “died in a gas chamber.” Milgram soon realized that the only way the “inhumane policies” of the Holocaust could occur, was if a large amount of people “obeyed orders” (Romm, 2015). This influenced the hypothesis of the experiment. How much pain would someone be willing to inflict on another just because an authority figure urged them to do so? The experiment involved a teacher who would ask questions to a concealed learner and a shock system. If the learner answered incorrectly, he would receive a shock. Milgram conducted the experiment many times over the course of 2 years, but the most well-known trial included 65% of participants who were willing to continue until they reached the fatal shock of 450 volts (Romm, 2015). The results of his experiment were so shocking that many people called Milgram’s experiment “unethical.”
Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.
Discuss the Milgram Conformity Experiment, include ethical considerations, the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.