Milgram Obedience Experiment

The Milgram Obedience Experiment, a series of experiments originating from July 1961, serves as one of the most significant and influential experiments done in history due to its investigation of the conflict between obligation and obedience to authority and personal morality. The experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist that primarily explored social behavior but is best known for the way he tackled the issue of the true power and influence of figures in authority after the Holocaust. Due to the shock of many at the discovery that human beings were capable of such horrible things during the Jewish genocide of World War II, the Milgram Experiment was conducted to identify exactly how the horrible acts of …show more content…
Although they fully had the ability to stop inflicting harm on the learner despite the requests of the experimenter, many of the participants, across the various experiments with differing circumstances, demonstrated a willingness to go to the full 450 volts regardless of the protests of the learner. In the 1963 Milgram experiment, over two-thirds of the participants reached the full 450 volts, with all of the participants reaching 300 volts. Therefore, the experiment concluded with the fact that ordinary people are fully capable of going against their morals and inflicting fatal harm on someone else just from obedience to an authority. The Milgram experiment was able to reach its objectives of determining the effect obedience to authority had on the level of cruelty that the German soldiers demonstrated by collecting data on how far on the voltage scale ordinary people were willing to go. The more professional the experimenter looked, their presence nearby the learner, and the prestige of the experiment location all impacted how willing the participants were to inflict harm. Nazi soldiers clearly had a lot of influence from the charisma, intimidation, and power of the leader of their country, Adolf Hitler. The Milgram experiment emphasizes that Hitler’s high position of respect and power had a huge impact on their willingness to commit such …show more content…
Many agree that the Milgram experiment could not be reproduced today due to its circumstances. According to Chapter 1 in the book, concealing the true intent of an experiment is entirely ethical in psychological research for the sake of experimental validity. The experimenter’s lie that the experiment was about the effects of punishment on learning rather than compliance to obedience is perfectly fine, since the results might not have been as accurate otherwise. The real issue comes with the emotional trauma that the experiment could cause to its participants. The mental damage that comes from knowing that you are capable of such horrible things just because someone told you to do them is quite a glaring issue in the experiment. An experiment should not cause any harm to its participants, even if it is not physical, but mental. In the defense of Milgram, however, the debrief of the participants afterwards usually ensured a decrease in their stress level due to the knowledge that the learner was safe from harm. Therefore, the effects of tension were only short-term, and the debriefing usually solved their problems. The participants were assured that their behavior was common and that they were not sadistic or horrible people. About 83.7% of people stated that they were happy to be involved in the experiment, and only 1.3% wished that they hadn't gone through the experiment. The