Ogien's Milgram Experiments

The Milgram Experiment conducted at Yale University in 1963, focused on whether a person would follow instructions from someone showing authority. Students (actors) were asked questions by the teachers (participants), if the students got the answer wrong they would receive a shock each higher than the previous. The shocks ranged from Slight shock (15v) to Danger! (300v) to XXX (450v). Stanley Milgram wanted to know if people would do things just because someone with authority told them to, even if it was hurting someone. I believe that the experiment was a good way to test the obedience of people

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

Draft thesis statement: Through numerous examples as illustrated in Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience”, along with the “Replicating Milgrim” experiment by Burger, individuals that have comprised an entirely different set of moral in order to obey, should not be excused for all accountability, even when responsibility is presumably accepted by someone with authority, as there is a lack of correlation between the impact of self awareness in morality to the pressure for obedience.

Hofling (1966) created a more realistic study of obedience than Milgram's by carrying out field studies on nurses who were unaware that they were involved in an experiment. McLeod, S. (2016). Hofling's Hospital Experiment of Obedience | Simply Psychology. [online] Simplypsychology.org. Available at: http://www.simplypsychology.org/hofling-obedience.html [Accessed 8 Oct. 2016].” The experiment was conducted on 22 night nurses when a Dr. Smith (Stooge) phones the hospital and had asked the nurses to check if they had the drug astroten. The maximum dosage was meant to be 10 mg but they were asked to administer 20 mg to a patient. Dr. Smith instructed them he was busy and needed to hurry and would sign the correct authorization forms in the near

The Roles of Social Powers In the article, “The Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he suggests that testing subjects given immoral demands from an authority figure can cause them to be more obedient, even if it is wrong. In the article titled “The Power of Situations” by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, they can be seen to agree with situational behavior in the Mcleod Study, but go about it in a different way than Mcleod explains in his article. Ross & Nisbett present multiple studies that have found that a certain situation can alter how one dictates their conscience, making their behavior different. While McLeod and Ross & Nisbett both discuss the influence of situational factors on human behavior, Ross & Nisbett provide a much broader approach

Each of the two experiments carried out by Milgram and Zimbardo had questionable ethics in their procedure. Ethics is defined as “Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). In psychology, ethics are moral guidelines when conducting social experiments such as these, so that the dignity of each participant is respected and preserved. This piece of work will evaluate the perceived ethics in Milgram’s experiment of human obedience to authority figures, and Zimbardo’s experiment of conformity to roles, and also provide an overall conclusion on whether or not these studies were ethical.

According to Aristotle, a virtue is a trait of mind or character that helps us achieve a good life, which he argues is a life in accordance with reason. There are two types of virtue: intellectual and moral. Aristotle holds the view that moral virtues are states of character lying in the middle between extremes of deficiency and excess. Moral virtue has to do with feeling, choosing, and acting well. Virtue is acquired through habit and continuous action. It does not come about simply by learning but by practice. In holding that moral virtues are states of character, Aristotle gives us a view of what sorts of things virtues are. However, not all states of character are virtues, there are more states of character that are vices. Aristotle's view that virtues lie at the mean between two extremes is supposed to help

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:

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.”

In Stanley Milgram’s ‘The Perils of Obedience’, Milgram reports from his studies of how far an individual can go in obedience to instructions and he pointed out that individuals can go as far as causing serious harm to the other people. Basically, the experiments are meant to test the choice that an individual would make when faced with the conflict of choosing between obedience to authority and obedience to one’s conscience. From the tests, it was found out that a number of people would go against their own conscience of choosing between what is wrong and what is right so as to please the individual in authority (Milgram 317). However, the experiments conducted by Milgram caused a wide range of controversy for instance; according to Diana Baumrind, the experiments were immoral. Baumrind notes in ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that Milgram did not only entrap his subjects, but he also potentially caused harm to his subjects (Baumrind 329). Based on the arguments that have been presented by the two authors, it is apparent that the two authors are concerned with real life situations, authority and ethics but the difference is that they both view these perspectives from different points of view as indicated by their writings. By and large, they also tend to show the importance or the insignificance of the experiments.

Milgram deceived his participants through vaguely informing them of the study therefore they weren’t aware of the true nature of the study. He also told them that they would be administering ‘real’ electric shocks to a ‘real’ participant therefore gauging an accurate reaction to the prods. Furthermore, he didn’t stick to his statement that they could withdraw at any time, making them forget that they have the ability to be defiant. Milgram also didn’t consider the long term effects that these participants may face after the study.

Today, Milgram’s experiment would be conducted differently; prior approval of members of the institutional review board would ensure the rights of the individuals participating. The primary concern Milgram’s experiment was that the participants in the experiment were explicitly deceived, both about the nature of the study and about the reality of the electric shock. The procedure of Milgram’s experiment study would be considered unethical and would be not be approved by the standards upheld today. People involved in making the research focus on how to protect best the participants as well as a valid purpose of the study. Protective guidelines like the IRB and inform consent are made to ensure ethical research. An ethics panel must approve research

While I feel these two experiments give insight to how people can act in certain circumstances, they are without doubt unethical by many standards. I would not say that the reward outweighed the risk at all and I personally would not want to participate or allow such an experiment to happen.

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