Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments

In each study the participant was give the role of ‘teacher’ and placed in a room with a ‘scientist’. The teacher was instructed to ask the learner (who was sitting in an adjacent room, and who along with the scientist where confederates in the experiment) a series of word associations, the teacher had to read the first word and the learner had to answer a matching word form a choice of four given by the teacher. They answered by pressing a corresponding switch on a unit in the room. The teacher was sat in front of a ‘shock generator’ a device which had 30 switches along the front which went up in 15 volt increments from 15volts to 450 volts. The labels above the switches described the shocks as ranging from ‘slight shock’ to ‘danger severe shock’ above 375 volts and the post powerful shock had XXX above it. In Milgram’s study the teacher was given a 45 volt shock to experience the sensation of being shocked and to show how the leaner would receive the shocks. In Burgers replication the teacher only received a 15 volt shock. In both cases the learner made the teacher and the experimenter aware that he had a minor heart

The trial got Milgram to thinking what might the average person be capable of when under orders. For his initial experiment Milgram included 40 male volunteers using newspaper ads, he built a shock generator with a scale of 30 switches that supposedly deliver shock in increments of thirty volts up to 450 volts labeled with terms like “slight shock” to “dangerous shock” up to simply “xxx”.

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

These results were very revealing about people's obedience to authority. As the subjects in the experiment went on delivering the shocks, they showed signs of deep moral conviction,

Prior the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University psychology major seniors to predict the behaviour out of a

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

In 1974 Stanley Milgram conducted the classic study of obedience to authority. The study looked into how far individuals would be willing to go, and were asked could they deliver increasingly devastating electric shocks to a fellow human being, as they were requested to do so by the professor in charge of the experiment.

As a result, Milgram's experiment led to numerous theories on why the subjects were overriding their moral sense. One theory suggests that all people obtain a repressed innate aggressive behavior that is

This could of caused long term emotion distress for the participants. He also did not have a follow up for the participants, he had no idea if the experiment had caused long term effects. Another problem from Milgrams experiment is that now that we look at it, how much of it is real? Milgram conducted his experiment in a laboratory type conditions and how much of it would be real in a real-life

Milgram selected participants for his experiment by advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.  The procedure was

“Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure,” thus occurring in Stanley Milgram’s experiment (McLeod). Stanley Milgram wanted to explain why “SS officers had shot, gassed, noosed, and otherwise tortured twelve million people to death, supposedly on order from their commanders in chief” (Slater 31). The explanation the public settled for the reason of the SS officers’ actions was because of the “notion of “the authoritarian personality,” which hypothesized that certain kinds of childhood experiences of a strict, Teutonic cast produced people who would do anything to anyone if instructed” (Slater 31). However, Stanley Milgram knew that, they could not completely explain the actions of the SS officers. To him it was too narrow “he purportedly believed the answer to destructive obedience lay less in the power of personality and more in the power of situation” (Slater 31).

Obedience results from pressure to comply with authority. Children are taught to obey from an early age by their care givers, in order for them to conform in society. The authoritarian rule continues through their education and working life, and is then passed on to the next generation. This essay will focus on the work of the American psychologist Stanley Milgram. It will also look at other studies into obedience that evolved from Milgram’s experiments from the early 1960s.

All of the participants continued to at least 300 volts (McLeod). From the results, Milgram concluded that ordinary people are likely to follow the orders of an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (Velasquez). Milgram was intrigued by the results and wanted to further understand what caused the subjects to obey the “experimenter's” orders. He crafted up numerous ways to change the experiment including changing the location to a less prestigious place, swapping out the “experimenter” for someone dressed in ordinary clothes, removing the “experimenter” all together, and making the “student” be in the same room as the subject (McLeod). All of these changes dramatically reduced the obedience levels of the participants. From his final experiments, Milgram found that the more disconnected from the situation the subject felt, the further they would progress in the voltage levels

Stanley Milgram’s experiment was pretty straightforward and simple. He put an advertisement in the newspaper for males to participate in his experiment and they would be paid $4.50. The study was to be conducted at Yale University. The participant was paired up with another person (one of Milgram’s confederates). The pair would then draw to see who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher”. It was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher and Milgram’s confederate was the learner (pretending to be a participant). The learner was taken to a separate room in which his arm were attached to electrodes that were hooked up to an electrical generator in the teacher’s room. On the generator were 30 switches that ranged from 15 volts (minor shock) to 450 volts (potentially lethal). The teacher would ask the learner questions that the learner was to answer. The teacher was instructed to give the learner a

Stanley Milgram, one of the most influential social psychologists of his time was particularly fascinated by the dangers of group behaviors. His experiment is one of the most famous psychological studies in history. The aim of the experiment was to identify the effects of obedience under authority. An example of influential behavior is during the war years where thousands of Jews were prosecuted by the Nazi’s. Milgram wanted to look further into the Nazi’s behavior. The results