Milgram has an enduring impact. His work has influenced society, though his work was incomplete. In “What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram’s Research on the Influence of Authority” by S. Gibson, he discusses other factors overlooked in Milgram’s experiments and demonstrates certain points through the Adolf Eichmann.
While Eichmann was on trial for his crimes in WWII, at Yale, Milgram was leading studies. He owed a lot of his inspiration to Hannan Arendt and her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she detailed the trial. In it, she coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe how regular people commit atrocities for banal reasons, like ‘I was just doing what I
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Millard, “Revisioning Obedience: Exploring the Role of Milgram’s Skills as a Filmmaker in Bringing His Shocking Narrative to Life”, we get a different view of Stanley Milgram’s famous documentary, titled ‘Obedience’, from 1965. In the behind-the-scenes film, “Revisioning Milgram”, there is an in depth look of previously unseen ways in which Milgram was able to manipulate visual image to create a compelling drama and efficient mode of transportation for his message on obedience and the human condition. It seemed, however, that the way Milgram tailored his experiment to reach a wider audience actually made him lose the visual narrative that he, as a psychologist, should not have lost. Milgram fashioned Obedience with the purpose to create a persuasive piece of media from his studies, scripting and excluding the conversation on resistance, as he hyper-focused on …show more content…
The ‘everyman’ portrayals of the actors, the scripts, the drama of it all. There was also a conflict of interests created, because he was the maker of the documentary and the scientific investigator at the center of the experiments. It has been argued that the success of the experiment is because of how Milgram handled the stagecraft, and how that in itself popularized his theories on obedience. The documentary may be compelling at face value, but the scripted-nature of the film, and the lack of scientific process and experiment used was not acceptable. The director himself was biased from the beginning to one side of the ‘obedience to authority’ argument and it showed. And with the results of the ‘Bring A Friend’ condition not adding up to his original findings, more scrutiny was added to Obedience and it fell out of
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
The ethics of the study were however called into question (Banyard, 2012). One protestors among many was Diana Baumrind (Banyard, 2012). Baumrind (1964) argued whether the ‘welfare of the participants’ was considered Banyard (2012, p.79). Baumrind (1964) further criticised the experiment for the damage it could do the public’s perception of psychology (Banyard, 2012). In Milgram’s (1963) defence, he was not ignorant of the potential harm caused to participants, (Banyard, 2012). In fact, he was
Ethical Guidelines that are Broken in Milgram's Study on Obedience The ethical guidelines suggest that debriefing the participants after the experiment is essential, which Milgram has done it thoroughly in order to reveal the aim and the true purpose of his study. Although he did not expect the out come of his research, but his ethics shows that the research is beneficial of understanding the welfare of World War II.
Humanity will always question the idea of obedience. Two prestigious psychologists, Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo, conducted practical obedience experiments with astonishing results. Shocked by the amount of immoral obedience, both doctors wrote articles exploring the reasoning for the test subjects ' unorthodox manners. In "The Perils of Obedience" by Milgram and "The Stanford Prison Experiment" by Zimbardo, the professionals reflect their thoughts in a logical manner. Milgram 's experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and experimenter: the teacher was the test subject and was commanded to administer a shock by the experimenter. Upon switching the generator on, the learner-who was actually an actor-would jerk, cry, and occasionally seem unconscious. Expecting most subjects to stall the experiment, Milgram witnessed the exact opposite. Zimbardo, on the other hand, staged a mock prison, whereas half the subjects were guards and the other half were prisoners. Every test subject knew they were in an experiment and complied with the two week trial. However, the majority of the test subjects-particularly the guards-found themselves fitting into the mock prison all too well: abusing, insulting, and yelling obscenities at prisoners was commonplace, compelling many prisoners to appear insane. The driving force for immoral obedience is contributed to several factors: As seen in the film A Few Good Men by director Rob Reiner, when obedience causing harm undergoes
Following results of his world famous obedience studies, Milgram developed his own theory of why people obey a malevolent authority – “agentic shift”. Milgram findings led him to believe a person can be in one of two psychological state at any particular time, and the “agentic shift” is what causes ordinary people to follow orders because they believed the experimenter has a legitimate authority. Milgram believed people acted without thinking, irrespective of their own beliefs - the participants were obliged to do as the experimenter said because of the experimenters “authority”. However other researchers such as Blass (1999) and Reicher and Haslam (2011) broadened the outlook
Chapter 2- Obscura Obscura talks about Stanley Milgram and his experiments on obedience to authority. The purpose of this experiment was to study how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. He was interested in how ordinary people could be easily influenced into committing atrocities, like the Germans in World War II. Milligram selected subjects for his experiments through newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in his study. At the beginning of the experiment the subjects were introduce to another participant, who was actually a part of Milgram’s team.
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.
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
Those who did not witness these authorities wondered how millions of people could obey and kill millions of innocent people or how many could watch this happening to others and do nothing about. Thus, the inspiration for Milgram’s
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
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
stressed and he hesitates about fulfilling the experimenter's orders. Desperation and the manifest suffering of the accomplice force the subject to stop the experiment; however, the legitimate authority orders him to continue. In this experiment, Milgram aims to investigate when people refuse to obey and defy authority in an explicitly contradictive situation.
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.
I’ll first talk about Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Adolph Eichmann and also talk about how his motives for committing the crimes were a “banality of evil”. Viewing the trial first hand, Arendt bases her analysis of Eichmann of the criminal charges that he is indicted on, his motives for the crimes, and how he tried to defend himself during the trial. The way that Arendt perceives Eichmann is by the fact that he was aware of the seriousness of the crimes that he committed at the trial, but he did not have the "evil" motives that would usually be seen in the type of heinous
Stanley Milgram, a famous social psychologist, and student of Solomon Asch, conducted a controversial experiment in 1961, investigating obedience to authority (1974). The experiment was held to see if a subject would do something an authority figure tells them, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs and morals. He even once said, "The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act (Cherry).” This essay will go over what Milgram’s intent was in this experiment and what it really did for society.