The Importance Of The Milgram Experiments

The Milgram experiment was one that shocked Americans. For the experiment Milgram had volunteers play the part of the teacher and actors play the role of the authority figure and the student. The teacher was ordered to give an electric shock for each wrong answer given by the student. The person in authority was there in order to be sure that the teacher continued the experiment. His results concluded that the majority of everyday Americans would administer a fatal shock to another human, simply because they were told that they needed to. In addition to his findings, he also developed his agency theory. With results like these, can anyone who was involved in the Nazi invasion, that claimed they were only doing what they were told, really be …show more content…
He put an ad in the local New Haven area newspaper looking for men to help out with an experiment taking place at Yale University (McLeod, 2007). They were told that the experiment was research to help with memory improvement (Busscher, 2012). Forty men were selected for the job (McLeod, 2007). They were paid $4.50 an hour for their efforts. At the time, $4.50 could buy a person 14 loaves of bread or 22 beers (Obedience to Authority the Experiments by Stanley Milgram, n.d.). The subjects ages ranged anywhere between 20 to 50 years old. The level of education varied from unskilled to the professional level. He chooses these men specifically because they resembled the men who helped Hitler through World War II, and Hitler’s lackeys were the inspiration for the experiment (McLeod, …show more content…
Hitler himself was not present due to his suicide before the end of World War II. The criminals on trial were responsible for the murders of millions. Most of the Nazi’s being tried, claimed that they were not guilty seeing as they were simply following the orders of their leader (Museum, The Nuremburg Trials, n.d.). Their responses to the severe crimes pinned against them interested Milgram, and gave him the idea for his experiment. How could anyone claim that they killed innocent people simply because they were told to? Apparently the moral, to always be obedient, that parents have ingrained into their children’s heads, when thrown into the right situation can overrule a person’s good conscience and knowledge of when something is wrong or right. So the question remains, can our parents and the average childhood be what is throwing people into the state of being a mass murder? Maybe we will find out in the up in coming years, or maybe it will always be a mystery locked away in the human