Stanley Milgram Essay

Improved Essays
Show More
The researcher Stanley Milgram, had strong opinions about Germans and their personality after World War II and wanted to carry out this research to prove that neither Americans nor anyone else is capable of doing harm to others if they were asked by an authority figure. His experiment involved a learner and a teacher, the teacher would ask questions and if the learner gets them wrong, he gets an electric shock. He tried out his experiment on Yale students and to his surprise, almost all of them obeyed the authority figure. Milgram continued to add more things to the experiment in order to get a negative response “disobedience”, for example; he made the learner protest, and in another instance he even brought the learner and made the teacher …show more content…
It’s essential to get the consent of the subjects, but here people only believed they were participating in a different kind of research not that they were being tested on their personalities. The research did in fact provide useful information to the society and eliminated some racial allegations towards Germans, so I believe the anticipated results in fact justified the research. No one in the research was getting hurt, the learner was an actor and the electric shock generator was not real. The psychological effect on the teacher after the experiment could result in negative feelings about themselves but other than that I don’t see that it will lead to mental suffering or more than that. There were no risks on the human subjects involved since it was all just an act to study their behavior, and the experimenter didn’t not pressure them in any way except that he would respond patiently and tell them to “go on, please”. It was a research conducted by Stanley Milgram who is qualified for to carry out this experiment since he’s a social psychologist, and knew how to conduct the experiment in ways that will not reflect harm to the human subjects involved in the study. The teachers had every right to refuse and stop the experiment, in fact this is what Milgram was looking for but as I mentioned before they still continued even though

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Critique Of Stanely Milgram's Experiments
    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Critique Of Stanely Milgram's Experiments

    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
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Stanley Milgram's Obedience
    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Stanley Milgram's Obedience

    Milgram’s Obedience Study Milgram’s original motive for executing this ethics breaking experiment was to learn why the German people allowed the murder of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust. Stanley Milgram wanted to learn as to how people can listen to authority and break their personal morals to follow someone that they believe to be control. During the Holocaust, Nazis led a massacre of millions of Jewish people without letting personal values, such as compassion, stop them from committing this crime. In a general perspective, Milgram wanted to understand the effect of authority and how far people would go to obey authority under extremely conflicting circumstances. If I were placed in this experiment under the teacher position,…

    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Summary Of Philip Zimbardo's Milgram Obedience Experiments
    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Summary Of Philip Zimbardo's Milgram Obedience Experiments

    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
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Just Do What The Pilot Tells You Summary
    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Just Do What The Pilot Tells You Summary

    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
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Milgram Obedience Experiment
    • 1464 Words
    • 6 Pages

    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…

    • 1464 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Purpose Of Milgram's Obedience
    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Purpose Of Milgram's Obedience

    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
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    The Perils Of Obedience Stanley Milgram Analysis
    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Perils Of Obedience Stanley Milgram Analysis

    “The Perils of Obedience” written by Stanley Milgram and “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience” written by Diana Baumrind are both intriguing articles about Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience. Diana Baumrind believes that Stanley Milgram failed at his experiences on obedience rather than succeeded. Stanley Milgram believed that he succeeded on his experiments if an authority figure tells the test subject to do something then the test subject will. “Stanley Milgram designed an experiment that forced participants either to violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure or to refuse those demands” (Milgram 77). While both authors address experiments on obedience, Stanley Milgram approaches…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Summary Of Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience
    • 1334 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Summary Of Milgram's The Perils Of Obedience

    Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, shares his results from an experiment he conducted in regards to obedience of authority in 1963 in, “The Perils of Obedience.” His experiment illustrated that when put under particular circumstances, ordinary citizens have the capability to perform terrible and unexpected actions (Milgram 85). Milgram rationalizes these proceedings through the conclusion that the average individual will decide to please the experimenter rather than resist his authority to protect the wellbeing of the learner (Milgram 86). Diana Baumrind, a psychologist who worked at the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, writes in response to Milgram’s experiment “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments…

    • 1334 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Decent Essays

    Abu Ghraib Experiments
    • 184 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Abu Ghraib Experiments

    Disappointing was my reaction, how sadistic some people seem in the name of science. What real benefit was achieved in conducting these experiments? That most people fear authority and do not know how to go against them. It is dictated to you as a young child through your life about respect of authority and doing as you are told. My question is, are there any long-term effects on the participants especially in the prison experiment.…

    • 184 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Stanley Milgram Experiment
    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Stanley Milgram Experiment

    The experiment was also rigged, so that no actual harm was performed on either of them but only believed by the participant. The participant always met- what seemed like an equal in the waiting room. This other “participant” was actually an actor for the experiment and always served as the learner in the experiment. The actual purpose of the experiment was to see if the teacher (the participant) would in fact listen to the authority of the experimenter and perform the tasks that were ordered. The idea of this experiment came from Milgram’s need to better understand the involvement of the Germans and their annihilation of six million Jews along with millions of other people during World War II.…

    • 608 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Milgram's Experiment Essay
    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Milgram's Experiment Essay

    Many people have the idea that during WW1 Nazis killed and tortured many Jews freely and even willingly. What Milgram is doing in his experiment is trying to figure out how easily people follow orders, orders that could harm and potentially kill someone. Milgram got participants through a newspaper article, and paying them $450 to complete the experiment (random sampling). The experiment was carried out in a lab at Yale, causing ecological validity to be good, as it 's a very trustworthy institution and subjects are more likely to abide when in a laboratory compared to a real world setting. He was using a deceiving method by tricking the “teacher” to believe that every time he flipped a set of 30 switches, which were ranged from Slight Shock…

    • 929 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Observation Of Milgram's Experiment
    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Observation Of Milgram's Experiment

    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.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    The Stanford Prison Experiment And Asch Conformity Experiment Analysis
    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Stanford Prison Experiment And Asch Conformity Experiment Analysis

    Milgram’s experiments created great controversy. They showed how vulnerable humans were to the will bending power of authority. This idea especially stuck around the time the experiment took place, the early 1960’s. America was still somewhat fresh off of World War II, and Americans were shocked to see that they were just as capable of being pushed to do things that went against their morals as Germans were under Nazi authorities. Milgram was thorough in his studies by including multiple permutations of the original where he tested subjects responses to different forms of authority.…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    The Migram's Experiment: The Ethics Of The Milgram Experiment
    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Migram's Experiment: The Ethics Of The Milgram Experiment

    Milgram Experiment Introduction Many people question whether the Milgram experiment was ethical or not, and whether the experiment should had been allowed at all. But like most significant psychological discoveries, sometimes ethics could’ve been overseen in order to obtain great data. Because of Milgram experiment, psychologists today have a better understanding of group dynamics. Milgram’s experiment enabled better understanding of human obedience to an authority figure. Ethics that might have been violated throughout the process of Milgram’s study can be justified in the experiment itself.…

    • 796 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Ethics In The Milgram Experiment
    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ethics In The Milgram Experiment

    Conclusion The Milgram experiment, in today’s time, is used to show what experiments influenced the code of ethics that is now used. Incorporated with schools, students that learn psychology and social psychology are educated about this experiment to study about the code of ethics. When the students learn about the code of ethics, this experiment falls on two of the codes that are violated: the participant should be informed on why the experiment is being conducted and the experiment should not harm the…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More

Related Topics

Ready To Get Started?
Discover
Company
Follow
©2024 Cram.com
Privacy Policy |  About Ads |  Site Map |  Advertise  | 
  • Cookie Settings