Stanley Milgram Experiment

Obedience to people in authority is a deep-rooted trait that we all possess by virtue of our upbringing, and as Milgram put it, “it is only the person dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, with defiance or submission, to the commands of others” (Milgram 1974). This trait is exhibited every day in family circles, workplace and school. People are most likely to obey instructions from people they perceive their authority to be legal or moral. We see people obeying their pastors, leaders in various societies and other people they see as higher to them; and they obey anything they are being told even if it involves killing another human being. They justify their actions, however wrong, on obedience to authority.

Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

In many situations, there have been authority figures with mass followings. Often the power the leader holds over their followers can influence them to do negative things. Many people believe that they can be independent enough to resist any pressure put on them by an authoritative figure. If this was true, then why do genocides mark the pages of history books around the world? Stanley Milgram sought to answer this budding question. He used his scientific authority to conduct an experiment which would reveal that most people would succumb to authority and obey their commands. This contradicts what most people would like to believe about themselves and their morals. Many people believe that they would never harm another human being, even under pressure from an authoritative figure, the Stanley Milgram Experiment proves that this is false. Although the experiment left its participants psychologically harmed, the results discovered why genocides continue to happen. Most people collapse under the pressure and obey any command given to them rather than doing what they believe is right.

The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous studies in psychology. It was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University. The purpose of the experiment was to study how far people would go in obeying an instruction from an authority figure if it involved hurting another person. Milgram wanted to study whether Germans were more obedient to authority as this was what people believed was the main reason for Nazi killings in World War II. 40 males were chosen to participate in the study, and were paid $4.50 for attending. The experiment was carried out as follows:

Stanley Milgram, in his essay, “The Perils of Obedience,” argues that ordinary humans can be destructive instruments when they obey authority. For example, the Nazis guards were following orders when they were committing genocidal acts. “Obedience,” written by Ian Parker, leads one to believe that people have different degrees of obedience under different situational factors. Parker partially agrees with Milgram on human obedience and how it can cause problems.

The four concepts of obedience, normative influence, communal reinforcement, and self-serving bias all contributed to the mass murders committed by the perpetrators of the Holocaust. While they are all interconnected and one can lead to the other, they all have strong and individual consequences. As shown by Eichmann and Himmler, it is dangerous when people are so obedient towards others that they can't stop to think about their morals or beliefs. When people don’t stand up for their values and what they think is right, they can transform into a perpetrator instead of an upstander. The men and women that followed the beliefs of the Nazi leaders during Holocaust and conformed to Hitler’s ideas were a huge contributor in the deaths of millions of innocent people. Unfortunately, being manipulated by these psychological tendencies led to one of most atrocious mass killings in the history of the world. Still, these concepts occur every day in a variety of ways. When students go along with what teachers, parents, or other authority figures suggest, they are giving up their rights to a certain extent by going along with what they tell them. In a classroom environment, kids can become “teacher’s pets” if they want to be accepted or acknowledged by their teachers in a very positive way. This is an example of a lesser degree of normative influence. Although it doesn’t

“Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure,” thus occurring in Stanley Milgram’s experiment (McLeod). Stanley Milgram wanted to explain why “SS officers had shot, gassed, noosed, and otherwise tortured twelve million people to death, supposedly on order from their commanders in chief” (Slater 31). The explanation the public settled for the reason of the SS officers’ actions was because of the “notion of “the authoritarian personality,” which hypothesized that certain kinds of childhood experiences of a strict, Teutonic cast produced people who would do anything to anyone if instructed” (Slater 31). However, Stanley Milgram knew that, they could not completely explain the actions of the SS officers. To him it was too narrow “he purportedly believed the answer to destructive obedience lay less in the power of personality and more in the power of situation” (Slater 31).

“Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.”

From the beginning, society teaches us to respect and obey all rules given to us by authoritative figures. Through the schooling process, teachers reinforce this idea by giving students orders and expecting them to listen without question. We 've learned that disobedience connotes with “being bad” when this is not necessarily the case. Many adults today still carry these teaching into their adulthood. It is no wonder why leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin easily manipulated the minds of masses for their own personal and political agenda. Still, many questions still remain prevalent as to how an individual reaches his or her decision on obedience in a distressing environment. Inspired by Nazi trials, Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, questions the social norm in “Perils of Obedience” (1964), where he conducted a study to test how far the average American was willing to for under the pressures of an authority figure. Milgram 's study showed that under the orders of an authoritative figure, 64% of average Americans had the capability of projecting voluntary harm on another person. Nonetheless, Diana Baumrind, an American developmental psychologist, argues in “Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Stanley Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience” (1964), that the experiment conducted by Milgram was unethical, leaving the subjects distressed and emotionally vulnerable. Baumrind states that the subjects were inclined to follow orders due to the

Stanley Milgram’s central focus for his experiment was to demonstrate how far average Americans would go in inflicting pain on somebody. This experiment was initially conducted in 1963, right after the Eichmann’s trial had happened. “Were these Nazis a different kind of human being” since they were killing the Jews left, and right? Everyone thought that the Nazis had no “thresholds of violence.” From this the world needed an explanation for the Nazis’ behavior, so Milgram decided to give it to them. He wanted to prove that the Nazis weren’t vicious human beings, but what they were doing (killing Jews) was just obeying orders. Therefore, he made a basic outline: take an average American, put them in the “right” environment, and this will change them into a “slaughterous Nazi.” Overall, he just wanted to prove that the Nazis were obeying their orders (Wu, 2003) .

The research “Obedience to Authority” was made by psychologist Stanley Milgram in the elegant interaction laboratory of Yale university in 1963. Milgram was eager to understand the behavior of the Nazi, why they killed all those Jews knowing they were innocent. Was is it because they were following orders despite going against their beliefs, or were they just doing inhumanly? He conducted this research because he wanted to know the power of authorities over an individual, and how far are people willing to go obeying orders from higher authority even if it is against their moral believes. In this research, forty random men were voluntarily selected from the age of twenty to the age of fifty.

Obedience is a form of social influence that depicts the behaviour of an individual acting in response to an instruction or command from an authority figure (McLeod, 2007). Obedience is one of the underlying factors that help society to function and without it, chaos and disorder occurs (Leveillee, 2011). The social powers of authority can manipulate obedience and in turn use this as a mechanism for destructive purposes that go against the moral and personal values of a person (Kennedy, 2016). This leads to the phenomenon that impacted the field of social psychology in the works of Stanley Milgram. His obedience studies unethically examined the effects of obedience when an individual is ordered from an authority figure to obey evil deeds. This fundamental idea was due to Milgram’s interest in the genocide that occurred in World War II as he wanted to investigate that obedience was the reason for the genocide (McLeod, 2007). It concluded that people tend to obey order from other people that are recognised as authoritative figures.

Human behavior demonstrates that people will conform to others as well as obey others with authority. As shown in the book, “Ordinary Men”, and in the Milgram experiment, these factors will greatly affect what people will do. When one sees others doing something that they might be against, it is still highly probable that they will follow the trend due to conformity. Likewise, if an authoritative figure orders one to do something that they are against, they will still obey due to obedience. During the Holocaust, many people were affected by these two factors, including the employees at the German railway network. Though their jobs ranged from desk workers to engineers to department specialists, all of them knew about what they were doing. Consequently,

The Milgram experiment is probably one of the most well-known experiments of the psy-sciences. (De Vos, J. (2009). Stanley Milgram was a psychologist from Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected people for his experiment by newspaper advertising. He looked for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.