Stanley Milgram's Obedience

The Excerpt “The Peril of Obedience by Stanley Milgram discusses an experiment testing on individuals through cruel and unmoral experiments. After reading Milgram’s text about the experiments conducted to see if individuals would compile with authority even if the command was unmoral. Stanley Milgram, an excerpt From “The Perils of obedience”, states that Milgram is making the following statement concerning the condition of the experiment: “This condition of the experiment undermines another commonly offered explanation of the subjects’ behavior- that those who shocked the victim at the most severe levels came only from sadistic fringe of society” (Milgram 699). By stating this Milgram explains that even if it means harming other human beings

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.

The experimenter in the study is the authority figure, constantly pressuring the teacher to carry out the experiment. When the voltages increased, the learner cite his heart issues in order to invoke a sympathetic response in the teacher. Meanwhile the experimenter is pushing the teacher to continue the experiment. Most teachers, at this point, would often get into an argument with the experimenter and would battle with their own morality whether or not to continue the experiment. The experiment is stopped when the teacher refuses to continue or the maximum amount of voltage had been administered.

Each time the question asked was answered incorrectly the voltage of shock would be increased. The “student” had been an actor hired to react to each shock, as the shock was to increase so did their reactions to appeal to the “teacher’s” empathy. When the “teachers” had reached a dangerous high voltage and continued to do so it demonstrated a form of blind authority. Blind authority is obeying the law only because it is a law, convinced your actions are okay because one is obeying orders of an authority greater than man. It is apparent that this is blind authority due to the “teachers” questioning if they should continue the experiment and demonstrating feeling guilt or discomfort in their task given. Although the “teachers” may have felt their task given was wrong they continued to do so because a figure of authority assured them it was okay, they were following the rules

When Mrs. Brant started with the experiment she had no problem with it at first. After starting to hear the learner's sounds of agony, she turned to the experimenter questioning him if she should continue; the experimenter without hesitation commanded her to do so. A second later she asked him again, then remarking firmly. She discussed with the experimenter about the learner's medical condition. In this particular case the learner has heart problems. The experimenter explained to Mrs. Brant that the shocks may be painful but they are not dangerous and again asked her to continue with the experiment. At that point she was not willing to ask the experimenter to stop anymore; she then wanted to ask the learner himself. She told the experimenter that she would continue only if the learner wished to. The experimenter once again told her she had no choice and that she was obligated to continue. She then refused to go further and the experiment was terminated.

In Stanley Milgram’s article “The Perils of Obedience,” several people volunteer to participate in Milgram’s experiment. It consists of a learner and a teacher. When the learner fails to memorize a word pair, the teacher applies a shock to the learner. The shocks increase in severity with each wrong answer, attaining a maximum voltage of 450 volts. Milgram states many psychiatrists he interviewed before the experiment predicted most subjects would not go past 150 volts, or the point at which the learner starts to ask to leave (Milgram 80). In his first experiment, twenty-five out of forty subjects continued the experiment until the end (Milgram 80). After several more experiments at different locations, Milgram obtained the same results. Milgram

The subjects of the experiment believed that they were taking part in a study on the relationship of learning and punishment. The subject would sit in a room and ask questions to an actor in another room, who was supposed to be another subject. In front of the questioner was a box that had a series of buttons labeled from 15 volts to 450 volts. The subject was told to shock the person every time they answered incorrectly, increasing the voltage each time. As the shocks got worse, the actor would make noise, bang on the wall, yell for help, etc. but the researcher would tell the subject to keep going. Milgrim found, contrary to many psychologists predictions, that sixty-five percent of the subjects delivered the shocks all the way up to 450 volts (Slater).

Stanley Milgram writes about his shocking experiment in “Perils of Obedience.” Milgram writes on the behaviors that the people had during the experiment. Milgram had an experiment that involves two people. One person was a student and the other a teacher. The student was strapped into an electric chair and was required to answer certain questions. The teacher asked a certain word, and the student must know the pair that goes with it. If the student answered the question incorrectly, the teacher must shock the student. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the volts increase. Milgram was expecting the teachers to back out of the experiment once they saw the student in pain for the first time, but surprisingly enough, more than sixty percent of the teachers obeyed the experimenter and continued on with the experiment, reaching up to four-hundred-fifty volts. After three times of the four-hundred-fifty volt shock, the experiment was called to halt.

Yale University Psychologist, Stanley Milgram (1963) demonstrated an experiment called the Milgram's experiment. It was meant to be about the study of obedience and what people would do when others were in pain, demand to stop the experiment or continue following orders. It took place in 1961 a year after world war II, Milgram wanted to make inquires about obedience and if that was the reason for the nazi killings, due to the Germans listening to their orders no matter what the situation was. "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974). Milgram chose 2 participants at a time one was a teacher and the other would be the learner the teacher would

The man in the chair was required to learn a list of words, and his goal would be while strapped to the electric chair to recall the paired word. The paid participant was then given four choices while the actor mainly gave wrong answers in return resulting in electric shock. The catch was there really was no shock, and it was just a mind trick played on the man giving the choices. If the teacher began to hesitate the experimenter would list of four statements in a row. These statements consisted of: “Please continue”, “The experiment requires you to continue”, “It is absolutely essential that you continue”, and finally “You have no other choice but to

At this point, the Teacher and Learner were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. The Teacher was then given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample what the Learner would supposedly to receive during the experiment. After the Teacher was given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the Learner. The Teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. To respond the Learner would press a button to indicate their answer, if the answer was wrong the teacher would shock the Learner with the voltage increasing by 15-volts for each wrong answer, if correct the Teacher would read the next word pair. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer the Learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a series of wrong answers the Learner would start complaining about their heart, afterwards there would be no response from the Learner at all. Many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner at this point in the experiment. Some paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment, while most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects even began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress when they heard the screams of the

The participant believed he was delivering real shocks, but the learner was a confederate who pretended to be shocked. Once the 300 volt level was reached the learner would bang the wall and demand to be released, or become silent and refuse to answer questions. The experimenter instructed the teacher to treat this as an incorrect response and to deliver a further shock. Out of the 40 participants, 26 delivered the maximum shocks while 14 stopped before reaching the higher levels. Many of the participants became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at the experimenter (Cherry,

After WW2 was over in 1945, Nazi soldiers were rounded up and put on trial for their killings. For most of the soldiers put on trial, their excuse for killing people was that they were following orders. With this idea in the back of his mind, a social psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram created an experiment to figure out how obedient a person really was to their authority figure. According to Kristen Fescoe, a publisher of the Online Psychology Degree Guide, the Milgram experiment is one of the 25 most influential psychological experiments in history because of its enduring impact in the psychological community. This essay reveals what the experiment was for and how it affected the world.

Milgram was working as a professor at Yale University, when he began conducting a series of experiments that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and obeying authority (Cherry, 2004). At the time, many people were accused of affiliating with Nazis during World War II. A popular justification given by those on trial was that they were only following orders. The study began just one year after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. Milgram’s experiment was devised 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?" (McLeod, 2007).

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