The Human Behavior Experiment

In the article presented to read for this assignment, an incident took place where employees in a Burger King in Minnesota were caught breaking, and smashing over 20 windows at the restaurant. A call was made saying that the windows were being smashed and when police arrived it was discovered that is was in fact the employees of the restaurant. The reason the employees were performing such an act was because of alarming phone call that the business received. The caller posed as fire department official and made a claim that if the employees did not smash out the windows, to relieve the pressure, then the building would explode. The incident was recorded by civilians and in fact you can see the employees breaking and smashing out the windows …show more content…
It was performed to help to the conclusion of how and why human behavior changes for better or worse. For example, why good people fail to perform good acts to save a life, or why war veterans can protect the country for so long and then use the skills learned to perform unlawful deeds. An experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram using an electronic box. The experiment was not to test the person getting shocked but the person conducting the test. He wanted to figure out why a person would continue to inflict pain on another human being with no real motive, and how far the tester would go on the meter before stopping. The test showed that an “authority figure” was all that was really needed to get someone to perform the task that you are asking to them to do, whether it is rational or …show more content…
The employees performed actions similar to the teachers of Milgram’s obedience studies. They received a task from an authority and performed that action to be obedient. Even though the actions did not seem made to be very rational; at the specific time what they were being told to do seemed like the only right thing to do. The call from what was perceived an official from the fire department and the employees acted accordingly to the instructions giving. As stated before they were told to bash out the windows of the restaurant to relieve the air pressure in the building, and keep it from exploding. The victims of this game followed the instructions because they were being obedient to the official and doing what they were supposed to do. They followed the instructions with no questions