A Critical Analysis Of Stanley Milgram's Experiment

He conducted 18 different variations of the original experiment. When changing different variables the obedience percentage dropped significantly. These variations showed that when the “authority” figure was wearing some sort of uniform the obedience levels would rise but when the participants question their authority they percentage decreased. In other variations the learner and the teacher were placed in the same room so the teacher can experience the pain the learner was going through. In this variation the obedience fell too. Throughout all of the variations the percentage of participants administering the maximum 450 volts decreased significantly when different variables were added to the

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment, which later wrote about it in “The Perils of Obedience” in 1963 to research how people obey authoritative figures and what extent a person would go inflicting pain onto an innocent person. The study involved a teacher (subject), learner (actor), and an experimenter (authoritative figure). The teacher was placed in front of a control panel labeled with electrical shocks ranging from 15 to 450 volts and instructed to shock the learner incrementally if they gave a wrong answer when asked questions with word associations. Switches corresponded with the voltage ranging from “Slight Shock” to “Danger: Severe Shock” followed by

In 1963 a psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted one of the greatest controversial experiments of all time. Milgram tested students from Yale to discover the obedience of people to an authoritative figure. The subjects, whom did not know the shocks would not hurt, had to shock a “learner” when the “learner” answered questions incorrectly. Milgram came under fire for this experiment, which many proclaimed was unethical. This experiment of Milgram’s stimulated the creation of several responsive articles. Two articles that respond to this experiment are authored by Diane Baumrind and Ian Parker. These two authors attempt to review the methods, results, and ethical issues of Milgram’s experiment.

The experimenter would show the participant along with a confederate a shock generator with voltages of 15v to 450v (30 switches in 15v increments). Participants were told this was connected to a chair in another room. They then drew lots to decide who would be the “teacher” in charge of shocks and who the “learner” receiving shocks (the outcome was rigged for the participant to be the teacher). The confederate was then strapped into the chair, and the participant was given a sample shock of 45v from the generator (the only real shocks given during the experiment) and the experiment would begin. Word pairs were read out which the teacher would ask questions on through an intercom. Wrong answers received a shock which increased with each incorrect response. If the participant reached 450v they would repeat that level twice before the experiment was concluded. Any questioning or refusal to continue was met with standard answers from the experimenter such as “although the shocks are painful, there is no permanent tissue damage” or “the experiment requires that you continue”.

In Stanley Milgram’s article “The Perils of Obedience,” several people volunteer to participate in Milgram’s experiment. It consists of a learner and a teacher. When the learner fails to memorize a word pair, the teacher applies a shock to the learner. The shocks increase in severity with each wrong answer, attaining a maximum voltage of 450 volts. Milgram states many psychiatrists he interviewed before the experiment predicted most subjects would not go past 150 volts, or the point at which the learner starts to ask to leave (Milgram 80). In his first experiment, twenty-five out of forty subjects continued the experiment until the end (Milgram 80). After several more experiments at different locations, Milgram obtained the same results. Milgram

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

On arriving for the experiment they were told that they would play he role of the teacher. They were to read a series of words pairs to an individual on the opposite side of a partition. They were to test the individuals' memory by giving him a word and asking him to select the correct matching word from four alternatives. Each time the learner made an error, they were to give him/her an electric shock at the touch of a lever. The individual was strapped into an electric chair while they watched. The teachers had levers in front of them labelled from 15 to 450 volts and switches labelled from slight shock to danger: severe shock to the final ‘XXX'. They were instructed to move one lever higher on the shock generator each time the learner made an error. There were not of course any shocks.

The learner and experimenter were actually controlled variables and part of the experiment. The teacher taught the learner certain words, then would test him on the words that the learner learned. If the learner answered wrong, the teacher would “shock” him with a small voltage of electricity. With each wrong answer, the teacher would have to increase the voltage. As well as, the learner needed to pretend that they were actually getting shocked since the teacher could not see the damage he was

Unknown to the participant, the only shock ever used was 45 volts however; they believed that they were actually inflicting a higher shock. To support this, a tape recording was played in which the ‘learner’ could be heard moaning or crying out in pain. This study was carried out in a laboratory, with the authority figure being a scientist wearing a lab coat. This person would demand that the participant continue to shock the ‘learner’ when given an incorrect answer despite the protests. It was the reaction to this that Milgram was interested

To authenticate the potential electrical intensity to the learner the teacher is sampled with a 45-volt shock to the wrist. The teacher is then instructed to administer an incrementally increasing punishing electrical shock for each incorrect answer. This follows several methods to inform the teacher of the potential impact of the electrical shock that they will administer. These included, warnings listing the voltage range of 15 to 450-volts labeled Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock, Danger Severe Shock, and XXX, bright red

Proximity between the participant and the learner was changed, with it ranging from the learner not being heard or seen at all (yielding 100% obedience), to the participant holding down the learners hand and arm onto a metal plate, which they believed was shocking the learner (decreasing obedience to 30%). Milgram himself reported significant differences between these proximity conditions, but when Blass (1991) evaluated Milgram’s (1963) work, he reports the analyses and shows that regardless of whether a participant is close to the learner physically and emotionally, they still acted in a similar way. The fact that Milgram did not report these analyses also shows how there might have been some selective reporting in what he wanted the public to see. Blass’ (1991) analyses display how the situation was not necessarily that powerful, and that the participants acted in similar ways regardless of the different types of contexts they were put in. Furthermore, there was also another version of the study (state exactly which experiment this was) in which the participants could decide for themselves how much voltage to shock the learner to. It comes as a relief that they shocked significantly lower than the baseline conditions, showing that when the situation allows freedom, the individual can make a decision. However, I would argue that even though they had the freedom to administer the shock level of their choice, they still actually administered a

The estimates before Milgram’s experiment were in 2-3% of the subjects would be compliant, even to the point of administering a 450-volt shock to another person. The actual findings of the Milgram experiment being at 65% compliance came as a bit of a shock to everyone involved and to the rest of society. This demonstrates how for the most part, people think of themselves as autonomous, free thinking beings and view others in the same light. But due to the person-situation interaction, for the most part people will let the social influence of a given situation override their beliefs and characteristics (Stangor, Jhangiani, Tarry,

After watching the video today about the Milgram experiment, I was very displeased. The Milgram experiment is a psychological test to see how far some people will go hurting another person they do not know one bit. The “teachers” that were reading the learners the questions had no idea who the person in the other room was and just shocked them because a man in a white lab coat that looks like they had authority over them told them to. The first person that was the one giving the test understood you should not hurt anyone you don’t know and took into consideration that someone shouldn’t be physically punished for getting an answer wrong. I believe if you get a bad grade you should just learn from your mistakes and fix it for next time. Even

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

The results came back conclusive on the behalf of peer pressure. In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65% of participants administered the strongest voltage shock (450), although many were not comfortable in doing so. At one point, every single participant in the experiment paused and inquired about why the learners were being shocked for this, but many continued once informed that the testing was acceptable.