Stanley Milgram Experiment Essay

The Milgram Experiment violates three of the five principles outlined in the Five General Principles of Ethics. Milgram wanted to see if there was a connection between “the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience” (McLeod, 2007). Milgram’s hypothesis that he based his experiment on was “How the German people could permit the extermination of the Jews?” (Dan Chalenor, 2012). The first one that Milgram’s experiment violated was “Principle A: Beneficence and Nonmaleficence” which is where “psychologists strive to benefit those with whom they work and take care to do no harm” (Ethical principles, 2013, p. 3, para. 3). The second principle that was violated was “Principle B: Fidelity and Responsibility” which is where

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.

Another instance where V 's actions harm innocent people without caring was when he ordered innocent people to wear Guy Fawkes masks and march to the parliament to watch the explosion. These citizens could have been killed by the military officers who waited for orders to strike though no orders were given. If V was a revolutionary, he could have found the way of making a statement without risking the lives of the innocent citizens. His evil actions present him as a rebel against the government and his fellow citizens. He also states that ‘ 'violence could be used for good. ' ' V 's actions of not caring about the others were the same as compared to Stanley Milgram experiment actions. The subjects in this experiment were suffering, but the experimenter did nothing to relieve the students the pain. Instead, he urged the teachers to continue to torture the students knowing very well they were suffering from the high voltage. The teachers played the sadist role as they agreed as they completely obeyed the experimenter 's instructions. V 's evil actions also present him as a sadist by enjoying hurting people and killing the ones who were in charge of the experiments.

In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram introduces us to his experimental studies on the conflict between one’s own conscience and obedience to authority. From these experiments, Milgram discovered that a lot of people will obey a figure in authority; irrespective of the task given - even if it goes against their own moral belief and values. Milgram’s decision to conduct these experiments was to investigate the role of Adolf Eichmann (who played a major part in the Holocaust) and ascertain if his actions were based on the fact that he was just following orders; as most Germans accused of being guilty for war crimes commonly explained that they were only being obedient to persons in higher authority.

Beginning in 1933, it is estimated that nearly six million innocent Jews were slaughtered during the events of the Holocaust. Gas chambers, death camps, and daily corpse quotas were erected in order to execute the policies of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Although these inhumane policies originated from a single mind, they were implemented on a massive scale by countless individuals simply following orders with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. Three months after the start of Eichmann’s trial, Milgram devised a psychological experiment to determine whether the accomplices involved were truly guilty or were simply following the orders of an authority figure.

After experiment like this you are supposed to get therapy if you need it. Milgram followed these rules but he still got criticized. I believe that as long as he followed ALL the rules and regulations he shouldn't be bashed. Yet he must not have done everything right or up to standard because people still talk badly about the experiment as of today.

"Obedience", Stanley Milgram stated, "was more of a function of the situation than of the personalities of the participants." (Wade, Pg. 259). A football player from a local university died after the coach made him go through hours of a grueling weight lifting routine. He was given very little water or rest, the player wanted to stop but continued because the coach told him to. His fellow team mates also wanted to help but kept going with the workout because the coach said to.

A while after receiving his doctorate, Milgram began studying the justifications of genocide, in particular the case of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was responsible for countless war crimes associated with the Nazis, however he claimed that him and all of his accomplices were simply following orders. A year after Eichmann’s trial, Milgram had set out to find the answer to his new found 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). It is this underlying question that supported the entire experiment, essentially a study focusing on the conflicts between obedience to authority and personal conscience. As in, would you harm a person if you were told to do so by someone with high authority? The experiments began in July of 1961, at Yale University, when Milgram began a search for participants, by publishing a short advertisement in a newspaper.

The first video I watched was the “Stanley Milgram Experiment” video. In the video, volunteers participated in an experiment to see how people reacted to authority. The would take two people, one of which was an actor, and would label them as teacher and student. The student was always played by the actor, and the teacher was played by an unsuspecting volunteer. The teacher was taken to a separate room, and was then given instructions to read off a series of words.

The two experiments were a tested at different time periods and for different purposes. For instance, the Milgram experiment was originally tested to study obedience to authority, in response to Adolf Eichmann trial, a Nazi war criminal, that stated he,” was just stating orders under the Reich.” The experiment proved to be that under authority rule, actions, even if morally wrong and unethical can be still taken forward with due to a strict authority presence.

Last class we spoke about The Stanley Milgam Experiments, The Stanford Prison Experiments and The Asch Conformity Experiments. We discussed authority and what that does to people in vulnerable or difficult scenarios. This class forced me to question how I’ve been throughout my life during traumatic events and how I’ll act in the future, should these situations arise. In the Milgram experiment there was a 'teacher' assigned and a 'student' assigned. The 'teacher' cannot see their 'student' but can hear them.

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.”

During the Holocaust, millions of Jews were murdered. One specific person did not cause these deaths, because there was a division of labor. Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi organizer of these mass murders, never saw the direct effects of the genocide he was orchestrating. After the Holo-caust, Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to study the levels of obedience to authority; he used his experiment to find where evil resided in people and to discover the cause of the Holo-caust. Some people found his findings useful information, while others thought his experiment was morally unacceptable due to his use of deception. Diana Baumrind, author of “Some Thoughts on the Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram’s ‘Behavioral Study of Obedi-ence,’” disagrees with Milgram’s use of deception and manipulation in his experiment. Con-trasting Baumrind, Richard Herrnstein, author of “Measuring Evil,” believes deception was nec-essary in order for Milgram’s experiment to be effective. Deception is ultimately needed in the experiment, especially because Milgram’s findings are beneficial information for social science.

The Milgram experiment is probably one of the most well-known experiments of the psy-sciences. (De Vos, J. (2009). Stanley Milgram was a psychologist from Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected people for his experiment by newspaper advertising. He looked for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.

Between the Milgram experiment and all the other little experiments ended up raising a lot of eye brows and controversial discussions about the ethics of doing such research. Subjects were exposed to emotional stress, psychological stress and physical stress while being in the experiment (Cherry). Milgram wanted to answer questions which plagued society for a long time, such as “Was human nature inherently evil or could reasonable average people be coerced by authority into performing unnatural actions?” Many believe the study to be unethical due to the fact that the subjects were not fully aware of what it was Milgram was doing. The subjects were deceived into believing they were causing pain and suffering to another human being, when in reality the victim was not in any suffering or pain at all. The fact that they believe they were causing pain to someone else could have caused the