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Stanley Milgram Experiment Essay

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Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment on the nature of obedience during the 1960’s has sparked both controversy and admiration in equal proportion. This report will discuss the methods involved in this, with a particular focus on a variation which resulted in 65 percent of participants complying with to electrocute another person to what they thought was a dangerous level. It will also review ethical issues and criticisms raised as a result, recent research on the topic of obedience as well as the relevancy of the experiment within psychology and society today.
Background:
One of the most renowned psychological studies of the 20th Century, the Milgram experiment delved into the subject of obedience to authority. The Nuremberg War Criminal trials …show more content…

They drew fixed lots ascertain who would be the ‘student’ and who would be the ‘teacher’ which always matched the participant as teacher and the researcher as the student. Each experiment also consisted of an “experimenter” who was also an actor and was dressed always dressed in lab coat.
The participants were then shown to a shock generator, which consisted of varying levels of intensity starting at 30 volts and gradually increasing by 15-volts through to 450 volts. The switches were labeled from ‘slight shock’ to ‘moderate shock’ to ‘danger: severe shock’ with the final switches labeled simply ‘XXX’.
The student was then strapped in a chair with the electrodes attached to them, which the participant witnessed, before leaving the room to administer the test in the next door. Often the student would advise the experimenter of a heart problem prior to the test beginning.
Under the supervision of the experimenter, the student had to answer a series of questions. For any incorrect answer they would receive a shock administered by the ‘teacher’ which increased in intensity the more questions answered incorrectly. The participants all believed they were genuinely delivering these shocks to the other person. In reality they were merely pretending to be in pain throughout the duration of the

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