Preview

Milgram Obediance Study

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1318 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Milgram Obediance Study
Milgram Obedience Study

In May of 1962 Stanley Milgram, a Social Psychologist at Yale University, conducted a study on “Obedience and Human Nature” that was influenced by his curiosity of the WWII German Nazi Holocaust and concentration camps. Milgram asked “How could it be, that ordinary German people could allow the extermination of the Jews” and wanted to know under what circumstances would a person disobey authority?

The study took place in the greater New Haven area and consisted of 40 male participants that were recruited after responding to a newspaper ad. Each participant was compensated for their participation, and were given $4.50. It was thought by many professors that only 3 out of 100 participants might deliver the maximum shock.

After the recruitment, Milgram conducted a series of controversial experiments with his invention of a shock generator. The switches were labeled and ranged from slight shock, stong shock, very strong shock, moderate shock, intense shock, extream intense shock, to Danger Severe Shock and the last two only stating “XXX”. The voltage began at 30, increasing by 15 volt increments for each switch, all the way up to 450 volts. The purpose of Milgram's experiment was to try and answer,“How far would you be willing to go?”

Prior to the experiment the professor explained the procedure to each participant. The “Student” was hooked up to the shock machine with leads that were connected by a paste that was supposed to protect the skin from being damaged or burned. The proctor explained that the shocks would be painful, but would not cause harm to the subject.

The role of the “Teacher” was to ask the “Student” a series of questions. With each wrong answer the “Teacher” was to deliver a shock to the “Student”. However, what Milgram did not reviel was that the study was in fact, rigged. The “Student” had been given a script, and was instructed to pretend to be shocked.

During the experiment, with each stagged

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Two groups of subjects were told they were going to receive electric shocks as part of a learning experiment. One group was told that the shocks would be relatively painful. The other group was told that the shocks would be mild and produce a “tickling sensation.” The subjects were then asked if they wished to wait individually or with a group while the shock machinery was being set up.…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Milgram’s infamous 1963 study into the nature of obedience is often portrayed in the media as strong evidence for an innate human predisposition to obedience, “resistance is futile” (Parker, 2007) when it comes to the human condition to obey – even in a “destructive” (Milgram, 1963) sense. As Milgram (1963) himself states, obedience as a concept is one of the most fundamental aspects of society, and much has frequently been made of drawing parallels with the atrocities carried out by the Third Reich and the data produced by Milgram’s obedience studies [most notably the dramatic results of the baseline study (Haslam, 2012)]. The ideation is frequently asserted that Nazis themselves were displaying blind obedience (Debattista, 2012) to their superiors, and this blind obedience is what is captured in Milgram’s 1963 experiment, although this proposition must be questioned in lieu of a scientific analysis of Milgram’s actual works,…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stanley Milgram, born a Jew, wonders how he was fortunate enough to be born and raised in the United States, however, he was still impacted by the Holocaust. He felt very passionate about the Holocaust and feels guilty that he hadn’t died in the concentration camps with his fellow Jews in Europe (Miller, 2015). Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, sought out the reasoning behind why Nazi soldiers blindly obeyed authority, especially after the Nuremberg War Criminal trials in World War II (McLeod, 2007). The Nuremberg War Criminal trials consisted of thirteen trials against the higher ranked “Nazi war criminals.” The Nazi criminals killed innocent Jews but proceeded to do so anyway during the Holocaust (Nuremberg Trials, 2015). Some of the Nazis knew killing Jews was immoral, but claim they were “just following orders.” The fact that Milgram was a Jew (Miller, 2015) accompanied by the testimonies in…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    While the test subject is in complete control over when the experiment can be stopped based on their own level of morals, it would not be considered proper to put the test subject in an environment like this that could be perceived as “hostile” without their complete knowledge of their part in the experiment. It would be impossible to inform the test subjects about the extremely stressful experiment they would be taking place in without informing them on exactly what they would be doing, and in this experiment, the discretion of the test was important to get clear and true results. Another immoral part of Milgram’s experiment was the severe psychological stress imposed on the applicants. Numerous participants stated that they felt extremely uncomfortable about what they were expected to do, although a sizable amount of the members in the primary trials subsequently pronounced that they felt vastly pleased to have been chosen to take part in the experiment. Another immoral aspect of the experiment was the fact that the test subject was not expressly given the right to withdrawal from the experiment, and were continuously given orders to continue the experiment. Milgram claimed that in this experiment strict orders were essential to…

    • 1583 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stanley Milgram’s experiment was created to show how well people react when obeying the orders of authority. The subjects who ask the questions were the teachers, and the test subjects who had to answer were the learners. If the learner answers the question incorrectly, the teacher will punish them by giving them a shock that was harmful, but not life-threatening. During the experiment, the intensity of the shock increased, which made the learner yell and scream…

    • 1301 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In 1963, Stanley Milgram was interested in the psychology behind people who blindly follow authoritative figures. His interest in this idea peaked because of WWII and the atrocities practiced by the subordinates of Hitler. As a way to test this question, Milgram came up with a university study that would put people’s conscience to the test. This observation of the human mind would lay a groundwork and test the boundaries of understanding the thought process behind genocides. It did not examine the psyche of the main leader of a genocide (the authoritative figure), but instead analyzed the followers thereof (the loyal submissives who went against their conscience to follow the leader’s orders) (McLeod, 2007). This obedience to authority is…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, Milgram believed that the Holocaust was primarily the result of situational pressures that forced Nazi soldiers to obey their leaders regardless of any personal moral hatred. He argued so many participants in his study could administer painful electric shocks to a victim simply because they were told to do so by someone in authority. The Nazi’s…

    • 534 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Milgram Experiment

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Milgram experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram a assistant professor of psychology at Yale. The experiment wanted to show the obedience in people to the authority in others by creating a fake “shocking machine“. Lauren Slater quotes in the book Opening Skinners Box “In Milgrams view, any especially persuasive…

    • 1122 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The experimenter has two participant’s given two pieces of paper to choose one from, both of the pieces of paper have ‘teacher’ written on them. The learner is actually a part of the research team to help fool the other participant, the teacher. They are both given instructions on how to perform their part of the experiment. In this variation, both participants are in separate rooms. The learner is strapped with braces to initiate the electric shocks; while the teacher has the control over the shocks when giving word task directions. If answered correctly, no shock is given but when answered incorrectly than a shock is given, then repeat, but if another answer is incorrect, the shock is raised another voltage. The researcher will stay in the room with the teacher while performing the experiment. In the other room, the learner then unstraps himself and sets up the recording of him screaming in agony requesting to be let out.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University, conducted a series of experiments on obedience to explain some of the concentration camp horrors perpetrated during World War II. He tested the subjects' willingness to cause pain to another person if instructed to by an authority figure.…

    • 811 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stanley Milgrams experiments are some of the most recognized behavior experiments in psychology today. Milgrams most known experiment was ‘shocking’ to people and has also been controversial ethically. As Ian Parker stated it would “make his name and destroy his reputation.” Parkers Obedience essay talks much of Milgrams life before the experiment and how the psychology community thought about his ethics.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hypovolemic Shock Case

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Shock is a failure of the circulatory system. This causes an insufficient amount blood to be supplied throughout the body.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The man in the study that was actually getting most of them correct, and he was the one getting frustrated from the electric shocks. This experiment can be improved to meet scientific standard by, first giving honest feedback to the participants. So that the data would be accurate, and the response wouldn't be build just on frustration.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ab Circle Lab Report

    • 570 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The experiment consisted of 1,000 Pennsylvania State University students, all from ages 18-21 and all in the process of receiving an undergraduate degree from the institution. The students are split with about 500 male and 500 female, and of similar ethnic backgrounds. Each group(experimental and control) had about 500 students with equal amount of men and women, and ethnic backgrounds to make to the two groups as similar as possible. This helped to eliminate confounding variables which could have impacted the experiment's results. The EMG(or electromyography) and the AD Instruments Powerlab system to see the data, was used to measure the amount of electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles, and the electrodes were placed on parts of the ab muscles on the stomach after being rubbed by alcohol swabs. The experiment was over the course of three days, the first day was used to obtain a baseline for all of the participants, which required the…

    • 570 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Electronics and Electrical Engineer: this study gives them information of the possible causes and effects of electric shock that will be needed in their work.…

    • 1890 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays