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Obey At Any Cost
In the Milgram study “Obey at Any Cost” we focus on the elements of obedience in stressful times and see how it affects our judgment even if we have a moral code we live by. The experiment relies on the situation to influence people’s behavior, but how real is the situation? If it was you, surely you would understand on some level that this wasn’t real, that you weren’t really electrocuting someone, that knocking someone unconscious would not be allowed in a university study? Also, people pick up considerable nonverbal cues from each other. How good would the actors have to be in order to avoid giving away the fact they were actors? People are adept at playing along even with those situations they know in their heart-of-hearts to be fake. The more we find out about human psychology, the more we discover about the power of unconscious processes, both emotional and cognitive. These can have massive influences on our behavior without our awareness. Assuming people were not utterly convinced on an unconscious level that the experiment was for real, an alternative explanation is in order. Perhaps Milgram’s work really demonstrates the power of conformity. The pull we all feel to please the experimenter, to fit in with the situation, to do what is expected of us. While this is still a powerful interpretation from a brilliant experiment, it isn’t what Milgram was really looking for. Whether you believe the experiment shows what it purports to or not, there is no doubting that Milgram’s work was some of the most influential and impressive carried out in psychology. It is also an experiment very unlikely to be repeated nowadays because of modern ethical standards. Certainly when I first came across it, my view of human nature was changed irrevocably. Now, thinking critically, I’m not so sure but it prove it case throughout the experiment and I can agree with that.
In the Milgram study “Obey at Any Cost” we focus on the elements of obedience in stressful times and see how it affects our judgment even if we have a moral code we live by. The experiment relies on the situation to influence people’s behavior, but how real is the situation? If it was you, surely you would understand on some level that this wasn’t real, that you weren’t really electrocuting someone, that knocking someone unconscious would not be allowed in a university study? Also, people pick up considerable nonverbal cues from each other. How good would the actors have to be in order to avoid giving away the fact they were actors? People are adept at playing along even with those situations they know in their heart-of-hearts to be fake. The more we find out about human psychology, the more we discover about the power of unconscious processes, both emotional and cognitive. These can have massive influences on our behavior without our awareness. Assuming people were not utterly convinced on an unconscious level that the experiment was for real, an alternative explanation is in order. Perhaps Milgram’s work really demonstrates the power of conformity. The pull we all feel to please the experimenter, to fit in with the situation, to do what is expected of us. While this is still a powerful interpretation from a brilliant experiment, it isn’t what Milgram was really looking for. Whether you believe the experiment shows what it purports to or not, there is no doubting that Milgram’s work was some of the most influential and impressive carried out in psychology. It is also an experiment very unlikely to be repeated nowadays because of modern ethical standards. Certainly when I first came across it, my view of human nature was changed irrevocably. Now, thinking critically, I’m not so sure but it prove it case throughout the experiment and I can agree with that.