Evoking Freedom Study

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

Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo both address instances in which the hierarchy between authorities and subjects is clearly defined in an experimental setting. In Stanley Milgram’s article, “The Perils of Obedience,” the experimenter researched the effect of authority on obedience. The experiment involved a teacher and a learner, in which the learner would receive shocks if he/she failed to memorize a series of words (Milgram 78). However, the learner was an actor that did not truly receive shocks (Milgram 78). Moreover, the author concludes that individuals obey out of fear or a desire to please others even when performing against their own better judgement. Comparatively, the article “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” was both written and conducted by Philip G. Zimbardo. Initiating a mock arrest, Zimbardo attempted to produce, but not enforce, elements of imprisonment among volunteers to study the relationship between authority and prisoners (Zimbardo 106). Similar to the first experiment, the study proved that any person possesses notions of sadism that require tense situations to reveal these feelings. Although Zimbardo displays the power of situations more logically than Milgram, both authors effectively acknowledge the relationship between authorization and obedience by focusing on the test subjects that were selected for the experiments.

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

Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment video shows an experiment that explores how authority, or someone in authority, can impact the actions of the individual. While the individual may know that their actions are not good, they can be swayed by an authority figure to carry out actions that the individual would not normally do. This is because the authority figure persuades them to alter their actions because it is necessary for the greater good of the cause at hand. This is possible because the individual's fear of non-conformity may override their concerns of others, and they feel they are able to defer the responsibility of their actions to the authority figure.

The acts of conforming and obeying shape us significantly, whether we are conscious of it or not. They do so in ways that psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram attempt to explain through their research. Asch touches base on the topic of conformity and discusses the ways in which group behaviors and social norms can influence the decisions an individual makes. On the other hand, Milgram’s focus is on obedience, and he studied it by measuring average, everyday people and their willingness to obey authority figures, even if it involves actions that go against their personal beliefs and morals. They have provided evidence through experiments, and with this information, it becomes easier to understand the world of politics, and how these

While evaluating the idea that by thinking and speaking “I do” or “I do not”

In the first act of William Shakespeare’s, Macbeth, Macbeth’s decision to go ahead with the regicide of King Duncan was influenced by multiple factors, primarily his own decision making, the prophecy of the three witches, and his wife Lady Macbeth. Ultimately, the final decision was the result of gullible, caring Macbeth, who unfortunately cannot make his own decisions or think for himself. Lady Macbeth’s power-hungry endeavors and aggressive personality, and lastly the witches who set the plot into action.

There is a fundamental human need to belong to social groups especially if people were to live and work together, it is likely that they need to agree on common beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours in order to get along and fit-in. Thus, we learnt to conform to rules of other people, the more people see others behaving in a particular way or making particular decisions, the more likely people will feel obliged to follow the suit. This is called conformity and can be defined in different ways, Aronson, Wilson & Akert (2014) stated it is the changing of one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people. According to Deutsch and Gerard (1955), social influence should be distinguished into two types, the informational social influence and normative social influence. The occurrence of social influence has implied to many real life events, which has drawn many researchers to attention. This has lead many researchers to design distinct experiments to try and understand the cause of the conformity, whether conformity is situation dependent, and whether we are able to resist social influences.

This experiment found that when a group of two other people refused to obey the conditions of the experiment, then the third person would most likely do the same.  It was found that, “The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%” (McLeod 588). A similar finding is noted in Solomon Asch’s “Opinions and Social Pressure”, where it was found that when someone is among their peers, they are more likely to conform to the group opinion. Asch acknowledges that social pressure plays a large role because the individual “must declare his judgments in public, before a majority which has also stated its position publicly” (Asch 599). This confirms the idea that an individual is more likely to conform when they are being judged by their

The desire of acceptance can greatly influence our lives. As little children, depending on our maturity, we did positive stuff to get appraisal from our parents or negative stuff to get acceptance from our peers. In "The Rules about the Rules,” Stephen Carter explains the steps of living an integral life. In the first two steps he explains discerning from what's right and wrong and our actions is greatly influenced by societal pressures of acceptance. In "Shooting an Elephant," George Orwell contemplates the decision of shooting an elephant. Even though he knows it's wrong to shoot the elephant, ultimately he does it to avoid looking like a fool in front of the crowd. Finally, in the "Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram designed an experiment to test his subject’s obedience to authority. The experiment consisted of two people, one naive subject is designated as the "teacher" and the "learner" is an actor. The teacher reads a list of words to the learner and the learner is supposed to memorize the words and if he or she fails to do so, he or she will get "shocked." The point of the experiment is to see how far a person will proceed in a situation in which they are ordered to inflict pain on the victim. Orwell and

How far will people go to be obedient? While some people are defiant, most people will go beyond imaginable measures to obey authority. Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that tested human relations and authority. The experiment was scientifically sound and followed procedures but was very flawed. Milgram’s experiment consisted of an experimenter, a naïve subject, and an actor. The naïve subject is a volunteer who saw a public announcement stating that they would get paid four dollars (plus fifty cent carfare) for an hour of their time. Upon arriving the willing participants were told about the experiment’s process which included shocking a person when they gave wrong answers to a set of memory

The focus of my critique will be on Vanessa Patrick’s and Henrick Hagtvedt’s research on “I Don’t versus “I Can’t”: When Empowered Refusal Motivates Goal Directed Behavior. The purpose of their research was focused on identifying how language implicates how we feel about our decision-making abilities. More specifically, they evaluated our ability to refuse temptation in situations in which our minds were distracted in varying ways. Historically, a significant amount of research on this topic has implicated a litany of social, environmental, cultural, psychological and individualized reasons that overly-influenced the situational and

Tyler focuses on two main theories of compliance throughout his book, these are the instrumental and normative perspectives. Although most of the previous research conducted in this area has focused on the instrumental perspective, this study utilizes the normative one. This allows for one to focus on what people regard as just and moral opposed to what is in their self-interest. People will choose to voluntarily obey the law if they view compliance as an appropriate form of behavior. This feeling of personal or normative commitment can involve personal

Conformity and obedience are some of the factors that usually influence the various processes that determine the manner in which an individual behaves in a social set up. They also have an impact on how people follow and adhere to social norms (both written and unwritten) as well as fashions and their immoral actions (Milgram, 2010). Several aspects come to play when one is asked by another individual to do a particular thing. First, they will need to consider whether whatever they are being asked to do is morally right or wrong. Second, based on the circumstances, they can either obey or comply and better still, they can decline to do it. The term obedience refers to the act of an individual doing something that they have been asked to do. On the other hand, conformity regards to how others influence people. They do things that they were not requested to do. The influence is usually through the behaviors and thoughts of others. This paper will compare and contrast the factors involved in conformity and obedience.

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no