Observation Of Milgram's Experiment

Improved Essays
I first learned of Milgram’s experiment several years ago, but observing the reaction of participants provided more insight into the effect the experiment had on each individual. The most compelling aspect of this experiment was the varying reactions among the participants. Most participants appeared visibly concerned and reluctant to continue. However, several participants, although questioning the ‘scientist/teacher’ were willing to continue administering the electric shock to the highest voltage. Few were increasingly affected by the ‘learner’s’ response and either attempted to or successfully ended the experiment. I also found it strange that the participants did not simply ask if there were any consequences to ending the experiment.
In

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Stanely Milgram was a social phycologist who conducted an experiment in 1963 about nonviolent people being capable of hurting others due to obeying the authority under pressure despite their feeling of remorse. The way the experiment received progression was by having people play the role of a teacher and a learner. The teacher obeys the authority and the learner had to memorize a certain amount of words. If the learner failed to the duty, he would received a punishment of a dose of high voltage shock. Although the purpose of the experiment was to test how the learner was capable of learning, it to was to test the capability of the teacher to continue the experiment whether or not they felt guilt.…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, this is a largely simplistic view of the results of the experiments. The participants did not simply obey the person of authority named the experimenter. As demonstrated in the extensive video footage of the experiments, many of them exhibited great distress and tension, attempted to refuse participation, and tried to reason with the experimenter (Milgram, 1962). While it can be argued that a reasonable person could simply exit the room to leave or to check on the other participant receiving the shocks, the situation prevented this action, not physically, but psychologically. In turn, it may be argued that rather than obedience to orders, the participants of this study succumbed to incessant…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dalrymple begins analyzing Stanley Milgram’s experiment and begins to justify what happened in the experiment. The article described that Milgram’s demonstration was individuals that shocked subjects and tormented them simply because they needed to obey to power. Dalrymple expresses that despite the fact that Milgram proved even good people have the capability to…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 1464 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The primary purpose of the Milgram's obedience/electroshock experiment was to test people's obedience to authority. I feel the test was able to fulfill its objectives. It was successful because it should that the majority of people tested were willing to fully accept, with some reservations, what a authority figure instructed them to do. In The Real World by Ferris and Stein (2008), we are told that to conducted the experiment a system was set were a research subject was assigned being a teacher and then two others who were administering the test would join, one as experimenter, the other as a learner. The teacher was then shown the learner being strapped to a chair and electrodes being attracted to there body.…

    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Few Good Men was written by Aaron Sorkin and it is about a lawyer trying to defend two marines accused of murder. The two marines claimed to have received an order to discipline another marine and killed him in the process. The lawyer, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, then has to gather evidence for this claim and eventually get Colonel Jessep to state he gave the marines the order. The story encompasses many factors of obedience to authority and peer pressure and shows what can happen when orders are followed blindly. Many experiments and studies have taken place to explain why people follow orders even if it might violate their morals and result in someone getting hurt.…

    • 1739 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Milgram and Stanford Experiment During the Milgram and Stanford experiment, each person had a special role. When given a role, people try their best to fulfill their duties no matter what is required of them. These experiments aim to understand how far someone will go to obey their superiors and follow instructions. You were either a prisoner, guard, teacher, or a learner. Each and every one of these participants were influenced into having demand characteristics.…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Obedience to authority is a huge impact on a person’s morality. To further extend this idea the question on why do people with strong values, principles, ethics challenge and go against their morals when faced with an authority figure needs to be asked.. Many ideas are produced when asked this question; the focus will be on the internal forces that push someone to do something they normally would not do. Fear, conformality, and other internal experiences such as responsibility among others fuel the obedience to authority and change the way a person behaves. Michael Shermer and Saul Mcleod both provide extensive information on the stimulus of the obedience.…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Milgram’s essay “The Perils of Obedience,” he states “the real focus of the experiment is the teacher” (692). During the process there was a teacher, student, and experimenter, the students were hired actors. The experiment consisted of the teacher giving the student words in which the learner had to repeat them back, and if they got them wrong they would be shocked and the voltage would elevate with each wrong answer. Throughout the process and various teachers, Milgram saw different reactions, only one stood up for the learner refusing to proceed based on the learner’s reactions, another laughed uncontrollably, and the rest followed orders with no remorse regardless of how the student reacted (Milgram 695). Milgram’s point was “to extricate himself from this plight, the subject must make a clear break with authority” (693).…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Milgram selected many people at random and split them into the teacher and the learner roles. The teacher would read a set of words to the learner, if the answer was wrong a shock was exerted to the learner. As the experiment continued, the voltage would go up. The teachers did not…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Two psychological experimenters attempted to uncover the most brutal area of the human brain in their articles: Milgram 's "The Perils of Obedience" and Zimbardo 's "The Stanford Prison Experiment". The first and earliest of these experimenters was Stanley Milgram, who conducted his experiments at Yale University. He starts the article with information on testing whether or not a person would administer painful—and eventually lethal—shocks to other people when given the order by an authoritative person in the room with the ‘teacher’. His results were indeed surprising: twenty-five people out of forty administered lethal shocks when instructed. He includes excerpts from the experiment to add to his argument.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Diana Baurind Experiment Analysis

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 4 Works Cited

    Because the experiment takes place in a laboratory, Baumrind argues that participants will not act how they might in the real world. She states that the laboratory is an unaccustomed setting for a typical being and may cause anxiety and passivity (225). Correspondingly, Saul Mcleod, a psychologist who summarizes and critiques Milgram’s experiment, states that the “important” location of the experiment, obedience levels increased (Simply Psychology). The point about setting is one in which Baumrind and Parker are able to reach a consensus.…

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    • 4 Works Cited
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She argues that the experiment was affecting the participant even after they were done and had been de-briefed of what the study was actually about, as well as seeing and talking to the ”learner” (the guy who they thought they were electrocuting). Baumrind was also arguing the fact the the experiment had little ecological validity as subjects are more prone to abide in such environments, she also states that participants experienced long-term, negative psychological consequences as a result of their participation in Milgram’s experiment. Milgram had counterpoints for all of her statements, explaining himself and his thought process and why it was necessary towards the experiment. Baumrind says that Milgram 's experimental situations are not sufficiently accurate models of real-life experience, his sampling techniques are seldom of a scope which would justify the meaning with which he would like to endow his result, as well as result are hard to reproduce. These combined is considered unethical, as this experiment would never have been accepted by any institutions today.…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Milgram set the illusion in order to stage the revelation of “difficult-to-get-to-truths.” All the participants, whether skilled or unskilled, continued to the level of three hundred volts. Sixty-five percent of the participants, those who were the professionals or highly educated, continued to the highest level of voltage even knowing that the learner could possibly die at four hundred fifty volts. The participants were exposed to very stressful situations and caused three of the participants to have seizures, one so violent that the experiment was stopped. After the conclusion of the experiment and the participants had been told of the illusion only 1.3% of the participants stated that they wished they had not been…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    SUBJECT: I understand that statement, but I don’t understand why the experiment is placed above the person’s life. EXPERIMENTER: There is no permanent tissue damage. SUBJECT:…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays