Stanley Milgram, a professor at Yale University was an ordinary man of about middle age. He conducted an experiment to test the obedience of an individual under the authority of an individual. When orders are given from an authority figure does it change the course of action of an individual? History has repetitively shown soldiers and individuals making decisions based upon an authority figure’s instruction rather than what their own self conscience would choose. The Milgram experiment was designed to test this theory in a controlled environment at Yale University to get a better understanding of why obedience is often chosen over one’s personal conscience. Did the Holocaust have so many supporters because they genuinely supported the orders
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This was the hypothesis behind the experiment that would soon take place. With that hypothesis the data collected proved this hypothesis to be true. Two men never meeting before where both given a job, one to be the teacher and one to be the learner. The learner was placed on the other side of the room with a wall between himself and the teacher. The teacher would read a list of words and the learner was to remember them and answer the questions being asked correctly, if answered incorrectly the learner would receive a shock. A shock not to be harmful, but enough to be uncomfortable. With each wrong answer the voltage of the shock would increase. The teacher is the one who is administrating the shocks, but what the teacher did not know was that once the learner was alone in the room, he would unattached himself from the machine and would NOT receive any voltage throughout the experiment. The teacher hears cries coming from the learner, cries for help and to stop, complaining about heart problems. The teacher is compelled by his conscience to stop, but the experimenter insists that he continues with the experiment. Putting aside his own personal feelings over 80% of the teachers continued with the experiment and fulfilled the orders given by a higher authority figure, Stanley Milgram himself. Some teachers went to up to the highest voltage telling Milgram it was his fault if …show more content…
In our lives, we often push aside our personal conscience because we feel there is no other choice. In real life, people obey orders in their everyday settings, for example, nurses obey doctors, school students obey teachers, and everybody obey policemen (PsychTeacher). While Milgram’s experiment showed shocking levels of obedience to an authority figure, some felt it lacked realism of a real life situation. In 1966, a man with the name of Hofling decided to apply Milgram’s experiment among a group of nurses at a hospital. They brought in an actor to play the role of a fake doctor and he ordered the nurses to administer a drug to a patient they were unfamiliar with. The nurses followed these doctors’ orders going against everything the standard hospital rules taught them. Shockingly 21 out of 22 nurses followed orders from an unfamiliar doctor and administered an unfamiliar drug. The nurses did not know they were partaking in a research study and the realism of Milgram’s study was proven. (Murray,
This was the hypothesis behind the experiment that would soon take place. With that hypothesis the data collected proved this hypothesis to be true. Two men never meeting before where both given a job, one to be the teacher and one to be the learner. The learner was placed on the other side of the room with a wall between himself and the teacher. The teacher would read a list of words and the learner was to remember them and answer the questions being asked correctly, if answered incorrectly the learner would receive a shock. A shock not to be harmful, but enough to be uncomfortable. With each wrong answer the voltage of the shock would increase. The teacher is the one who is administrating the shocks, but what the teacher did not know was that once the learner was alone in the room, he would unattached himself from the machine and would NOT receive any voltage throughout the experiment. The teacher hears cries coming from the learner, cries for help and to stop, complaining about heart problems. The teacher is compelled by his conscience to stop, but the experimenter insists that he continues with the experiment. Putting aside his own personal feelings over 80% of the teachers continued with the experiment and fulfilled the orders given by a higher authority figure, Stanley Milgram himself. Some teachers went to up to the highest voltage telling Milgram it was his fault if …show more content…
In our lives, we often push aside our personal conscience because we feel there is no other choice. In real life, people obey orders in their everyday settings, for example, nurses obey doctors, school students obey teachers, and everybody obey policemen (PsychTeacher). While Milgram’s experiment showed shocking levels of obedience to an authority figure, some felt it lacked realism of a real life situation. In 1966, a man with the name of Hofling decided to apply Milgram’s experiment among a group of nurses at a hospital. They brought in an actor to play the role of a fake doctor and he ordered the nurses to administer a drug to a patient they were unfamiliar with. The nurses followed these doctors’ orders going against everything the standard hospital rules taught them. Shockingly 21 out of 22 nurses followed orders from an unfamiliar doctor and administered an unfamiliar drug. The nurses did not know they were partaking in a research study and the realism of Milgram’s study was proven. (Murray,