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.
“Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments
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Also, The Psychology Research Handbook says The Ethical Standards of Psychologist stated such rules in 1953, which Milgram clearly ignored (Leong and Austin 178). Parker and Baumrind also question the legitimacy of the experiment and whether the results were influenced by the authority figure alone or by multiple factors. Baumrind states that the experimenter’s cold demeanor and apathetic demands caused the subjects to act in ways they would not have regularly (Baumrind 225-227). The isolation of the subjects is another factor according to Baumrind. The lack of someone to strengthen the subject causes the subject to fold to the authority (Baumrind 225). Parker also questions the legitimacy of Milgram’s experiment. He says it is a combination of several different factors that will result in the subjects actions, not solely a man demanding a subject to complete a task. He continues in saying that people’s actions are influenced by the situation and what is happening around them (Parker 238). Parker quotes Ross in saying, “We can take ordinary people and make them show a degree of obedience or conformity… to a degree that we would normally assume you would only see in a rare few” (Parker 239). Parker continues with saying a subject’s obedience is not determined by a simple command but by a range of factors. In Understanding Behavior in the Milgram Obedience Experiment: The Role of Personality, Situations, and Their Interactions, the author Thomas Blass states that
In Week 1, students focused on research ethics and whether (or not) social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1963 obedience study was ethical (Mason, 2018). Milgram organized the study because he wanted to know how people might become strongly influenced against their personal moral and belief structures (Mason, 2018). Roscoe argued that Milgram’s 1983 disobedience study was completely ethical because the organizer pre-advised subjects as to the voluntary nature of the research and because deception is justified within psychological research. Roscoe also declared that no Milgram study participant experienced any negative long-term psychological effect. Additionally, Roscoe contended that all subjects were told, post study, that the administered
In the article, “The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, published the findings of his infamous human authority experiment. During this trial, human subjects were tested to discern how far one will go in order to obey the commands of an authority figure. The test subjects were fooled into believing someone was actually being shocked; however, the reality was the other person was simply an actor and never received any shocks. The results were astounding: sixty-five percent of the subjects continued the entire 450 volts, while the rest lasted until at least 300 volts. In response to the experiment, Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkley, examined the actions and moral issues executed by
Baumrind fairly claims the “laboratory is not the place” to conduct studies of obedience as the laboratory tends to increase the number of variables above what is desired (Baumrind 90). Science Magazine defends Baumrind’s claim by conducting an experiment directed toward answering the question of the reproducibility of previously conducted psychological experiments. The data collected shows a significant decrease in the strength of the data collected and the number of experiments deemed reproducible was much smaller than those which were reproducible (“Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science”). If the experiment’s results are correct, then Baumrind has fairly contested the integrity of the results of the experiment conducted by Milgram since his results have a stronger chance of not being reproduced in a laboratory than of being reproduced in a laboratory. Milgram adds credibility to his article by mentioning the population from which the subjects were drawn. Initially, Milgram enlists Yale undergraduates to volunteer for his study which led to results consistent with his study, but severely taints the credibility of his experiment. He then modifies his experiment and enlarges to volunteer population to include that of anyone living in the city (Milgram 80-81). His
Multiple arguments are made about Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments. Diana Baumrind, author of “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience” and a former psychologist at the University of California in Berkeley, strongly believes that Milgram’s experiments should not have taken place. Baumrind focuses on the aftermath of the experiment and how even when subjects were told that the screams they heard were merely recordings, participants experienced lasting effects (Baumrind 90). Ian Parker, author of “Obedience” and a writer for the New Yorker, also believes the trauma experienced by participants was unethical; some participants suffered from heart attacks after the experiment, and others were in therapy several years later when Milgram conducted a survey (Parker 98).
Stanley Milgram is a famous psychologist who focused his studies on authority and peoples reaction and obedience to it. His famous experiment and it's results were groundbreaking in psychology, surprising both psychologists and regular people alike. First I will discuss the reason for Milgrims study of obedience to authority. Then I will explain the experiment, its formulation, and its results. Finally I will cover the influence of the experiment on psychology and society.
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
In the book “Opening Skinner’s Box,” written by Lauren Slater, there is a chapter dedicated to the social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, and his obedience to authority experiments. Milgram assembled one of the most malicious deceptions in the psychiatric field. He crafted what basically turned out to be an electric chair. To test his theory that obedience wasn’t in one’s personality but rather in the situation of the matter, Milgram gathered willing test subjects and instructed them to administer what they assumed were deadly shocks of electricity to another person who faked, pain and perhaps death (31). The experiment was set up with one test subject being a teacher and the actor being the learner, the “teacher’s” job was to administer shocks when the learner made a mistake in the pair of words read to him, increasing the voltage with every wrong answer.
In 1963 Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, created an experiment examining obedience. This experiment has been questioned by many psychology professionals. One psychologist Diana Baumrind transcribes her beliefs in the “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Baumrind, when writing the review, was employed at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. In her review Baumrind denounces Milgram for his treatment of his subjects, potentially harming their self image. However, Ian Parker, a British journalist who has written for the New Yorker and Human Sciences, believes Milgram’s findings still hold a significant place in society today. In his article “Obedience” Parker focuses on the purpose of
A classic experiment on the natural obedience of individuals was designed and tested by a Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The test forced participants to either go against their morals or violate authority. For the experiment, two people would come into the lab after being told they were testing memory loss, though only one of them was actually being tested. The unaware individual, called the “teacher” would sit in a separate room, administering memory related questions. If the individual in the other room, the “learner,” gave a wrong answer, the teacher would administer a shock in a series of increasingly painful shocks correlating with the more answers given incorrectly. Milgram set up a recorder
The Milgram study was considered to be one of the most famous studies, on obedience in the history of psychology. The Milgram study was done by Stanley Milgram a Yale University psychologist, whose study was to focus on two things one being obedience to authority, and a persons personal conscience. The results of the study were remarkable, as according to (McLeod, 2007) 65 percent of two-thirds of the participants or teachers continued administering shocks to the highest voltage level of 450 volts. The rest of the teachers continued to at least 300 volts. Milgram did this experiment in 18 different ways and altered the independent variables in each trail to see how it affects the outcome or dependent variable. Milgram’s experiment was directly influenced by World war 2 and the holocaust, and while Milgram wanted to test how far people would go in obeying instructions even at the risk of hurting someone. Following Milgram’s experiment he came up with two types of theories, one being the autonomous state, which says that people tend to direct their own actions, and take responsibility for the results of those actions.
When individuals disregard their freedom for the good of the whole, they are no longer considered individuals but products of conformity. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, engineered an experiment to test the ordinary person’s level of obedience. Many of Milgram’s colleagues admired his intricate experiment, and thought that he provided valid information on the complexity of obedience. One of his colleagues, Diana Baumrind, however, strongly disagreed with Milgram and has good reasons to criticize his experiment. She thought his experiment was unethical and very harmful to the social well-being of the participants. In her article, “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”, she castigated Milgram’s experiment and provided
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
In her article, “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”, psychologist Diana Baumrind criticizes Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority, stating that not only were Milgram’s experiments unethical but so was the scientist himself, claiming that he did not take appropriate measures to properly ensure his subject’s wellbeing post-experiment and therefore, experiments such as these should not be repeated. Baumrind does address an important point in her review and that is the responsibility of psychologists to ensure that their subjects are treated fairly and ethically but this is overshadowed by the fact that Baumrind’s argument is one rooted in pathos with little evidence to support her claims while being
As we all have heard, a woman's hair is her crowning glory. Indeed, when you look at Danica Elaine Audrey D. Valdez, the first thing that can make your eyes locked is her long, bouncy, lustrous , and black hair that cascades down to her back. Then, as you move on to her face, its ovalness and silky soft skin that can be likened to Belle, one of the Disney Princesses, can surely captivate your attention. When her eyes are laid on you, being investigated by Sherlock Holmes is the feeling that will arise because she is a doe-eyed lass though it is hard to notice at times due to the spectacles she's wearing. Nevertheless, there's so much more than what meets us in our eyes. Amazingly, her body remains slim even though she loves indulging herself
The study was conducted by Stanley Milgram and aimed to examine how people “reacted to instructions from authorized individuals when the actions conflicted with their personal safety and conscience” (De Vos, 2009, p.226). The participants were instructed to work in pairs and play different roles. In each pair, one of the participants played a role of a “learner,” and was presented with different questions from the “teacher,” the second person in the pair. Experimenters observed the questioning process and asked “teachers” to apply an electric shock to “learners” when they gave wrong answers to questions. The main problem in the research was ethical, as the more than a half of “teachers” were instructed to apply electric shocks up to the level of 450 volts, which could be very harmful. However, the “learners” were asked to provide mainly wrong questions, and the “teachers” were not aware of this intention (Milgram, 2010). At the end of the study, the experimenters revealed the deception. The research concluded that “teachers” were likely to obey instructions from authorized individuals, even when the health of “learners” supposedly was in serious