Stanley Milgram's Experiments On Obedience

The study measures the willingness of ordinary individuals to adhere to an authority figure who told them to commit acts on another individual which may conflict with their personal morals. The experiment found that 65% of the individuals completely obeyed the authority figure and made it through to inflict the final shock of 450 volts on another human being for an incorrect answer. These findings shocked me and led me to believe that it would have been entirely possible for a seemingly ordinary person such as myself to commit horrible acts against another person if I was instructed to do so. I sincerely hope that through being educated on such experiments and the holocaust itself, I would now have the strength to stand up for what I morally believe in and refuse any order outside of my

In the book “Opening Skinner’s Box”, Lauren Slater discusses many complicated ideas relating to certain experiments of recent times. In every chapter, she focuses on one specific experiment and poses many controversial thoughts. One of the chapters I found most interesting was the second chapter titled “Obscura”. In it she walks readers through the experiments of Stanley Milgram and questions the purpose, results, usefulness, and morality of the experiments. To begin, the purpose of the experiments seem to be off to me.

This Milgram research on respect to authority figures was a series of cultural science experiments conducted by Yale University scientist Stanley Milgram in 1961. They assessed the willingness of survey participants, men from a different variety of jobs with varying degrees of training, to obey the authority figure who taught them to do acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to think that they were helping an unrelated research, in which they had to distribute electrical shocks to the individual. These fake electrical shocks gradually increased to grades that could have been deadly had they been true. McLeod's article about the Milgram experiment exposed the fact that a high percentage of ordinary people will

This book is not written to find Franz Stangl guilty or not guilty for his crimes. A court had already done that, this book sets out to introduce the type of personality needed to carry out the horrific crimes which served Franz a life sentence. Franz is a classic example of cognitive dissonance. Franz adopted abandoned his morals to allowed him to carry out and make peace with his work during the Nazi regime. One, he wants to make sure people know he knew right from wrong.

To What Extent Does the Milgram Experiment Explain Nazi Compliance?     The word “Holocaust”, was a word meaning whole (“holos”) and burned (“kaustos”). In 1945, the word stood for the mass murder of about 6 million people; mainly European Jews as well as some homosexuals and Gypsies. The mass murder was committed by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War.

There are many ways to find out how individuals would react in certain situations, for example, by putting individuals in a simulation. Causing stress and discomfort to individuals in order to gain knowledge is at times necessary. For example, Stanley Milgram’s experiments which focus on obedience to authority and the extent a person is willing to ignore their own ethical beliefs and cause pain to another individual, just because he is ordered to do so. Stanley Milgram writes about his experiments and results in his article “The Perils of Obedience”. In his experiments Stanley Milgram causes subjects who have volunteered to be a part of them some stress and discomfort in order to receive relevant results.

(Info copied from The Nuremberg Trials https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/nuremberg-trials Author: The WWII

While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test

For decades people have been asking how could small masses of people be able to carry out genocides against a whole race, in particular the Holocaust. In social psychology the study known as today as the Milgrams Obedience experiments are said to answer some of the questions people have regarding the Holocaust. The study showed that when participants were presented with the choice to continue shocking other participants, until the point of 450 volts two- thirds of the participants actually did. Researchers consider this experiment to be a small scale representation of the Holocaust and why it was possible to get civilians to kill off the Jews. However there are opposing views; the controversy is how well this study answers our questions; are

Zimbardo offered $15 per day for two weeks to take part in the experiment. The experiment was held in the basement of Stanford University Psychology building; they turned it into a mock prison. To begin the experiment Zimbardo interviewed over 70 applicants and done testing on each to eliminate candidates with psychological issues. Only 24 males were chosen to participate in the experiment.

The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.

Name : Muhammed Irshad Madonna ID : 250509 Subject : Medical Ethics Due Date : 8/01/2018 Paper : 1-The Milgram Experiment The Stanley Milgram Experiment is a famous study about obedience in psychology which has been carried out by a Psychologist at the Yale University named, Stanley Milgram. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. In July 1961 the experiment was started for researching that how long a person can harm another person by obeying an instructor.

The military spokesman justifies the gruesome and violent attacks towards Egyptian civilians by claiming, “… these soldiers were on duty, what were they supposed to do?” The idea of following orders is a common explanation many militants and police officers use in order to not be held liable. Scientist, Stanley Milgram, experiments the idea of becoming obedient towards authority that may control the decision of individuals. Milgram inspiration derives from the notorious Nazi officer, Adolf Eichmann, who similarly claims that he was simply following orders during the genocide of millions of Jews. Although, Stanley Milgram has proven that individuals tend to follow orders from authority, Egyptian militants who participated in the horrid attacks

"Obedience is behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority." (King, 448) If a store manager tells you to put a shirt on before entering the store, you're more than likely going to comply due to their request due to their authority over the store. You might fear that if you do not comply, you won't be permitted inside or even police being called. That is simple obedience, but what if an authority figure asked you to inflict pain on another person?

Otto Adolf Eichmann was one of the most important members of the Nazi Party who was accused of crimes against the Jewish people and humanity during World War 2. After the war, he went to Argentina to escape prosecution but was captured there by Israeli agents and was transferred to Israel to be judged. During the trial, Eichmann’s defense was based on Kant’s duty-based ethical theory and categorical Imperative since he overstated many times that he was only following orders. By enouncing Kantian ethical theory, Eichmann acquitted himself from moral guilt. Kant’s categorical imperative as known as The Formula Of The End