milgram obedience study – Flashcards
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when thinking of words to describe themselves, Most people don't think of themselves at evil, but when looking at the amount of wrongdoing committed in the world, think slavery, child abuse, torture, massacres of innocent people, the Holocaust, these atrocious acts were committed by people just like you and me. Many of us think, how in the world could these awful people ever be so cruel to their fellow human beings?
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How evil do you think you are?
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I learned about this experiment in sociology and thought it was fascinating, so I've been researching it extensively the past few days
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A social psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram wished to explore the idea of evil within us through a cleverly devised experiment, the results of which shocked the world.
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In 1961 in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Psychology Professor Stanley Milgram put out an ad offering men $4 for an hour of their time, the equivalent of $30 today.
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My purpose today is to inform you about the Milgram Obedience Experiment and how it proved that most people, when put in a stressful enough situation, will listen to an overarching voice of authority, even if that voice goes against their standards of morals or ethics.
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He wanted to be able to explain how such horrible atrocities could be committed to human beings by fellow human beings. This phenomenon is called obedience, or following orders of people above you
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Little did they know they would be subjects in one of the most controversial and shocking experiments in the history of the United States. Milgram wanted to study the 'evil' inside of all of us that caused the murder of millions of Jews after the holocaust.
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"the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority....for many persons obedience may be a deeply ingrained behavior tendency, indeed, a prepotent impulse overriding training in ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct"
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while obedience is essential in keeping order in society, without obedience our laws would have no meaning, there would be chaos, there is a darker side to obedience. In Stanley Milgram's Behavioral Study of Obedience, published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, he defines obedience as
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Milgram set up an experiment which tested to what level men will obey authority figures. in one room was the experiment controller, and the test subject, along with a switch board that was connected to electrical shock machine. the electrical switch board had levels of voltage, from 15 volts, slight shock, to strong shock, to intense shock, to danger: severe shock, to XXX, the most severe shock of all
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In this quote, Milgram is explaining obedience as the drive that causes men to obey systems of authority, it binds them to it, binds as in they are unable to escape it. in society we are used to obeying from the very beginning, and so when we encounter authority figures we naturally obey them, this is deeply ingrained in us.
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The test subjects were told to ask the learner a series of questions, and for every question the learner got wrong, they were to administer a shock to him. starting at 15 volts and going up 10 volts every time.
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the test subjects were told that the shock machine was hooked up to a man in the next room, the learner.
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Little did the test subjects know, the learner was not really hooked up to the machine, but was faking the screams and begging and pleading. As time went on and the shocks got higher and higher and the screams got worse and worse, the teachers would become increasingly agitated
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Every time they would administer a shock, they would hear a scream from the next room, and as they went up higher the screams got louder and more intense. the learner begged and pleaded to be let out, with no reply. the learner even told the experimenters he had a heart condition and asked to be let go.
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Stanley Milgram in his book, Obedience to Authority (1972) documented that the only replies of the controller when asked by the test subjects if they could stop were to: Prod 1: Please continue, or, Please go on. Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue. Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue. Prod 4: You have no other choice, you must go on
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in some videos, saw them laughing nervously, placing head in hands, asking the experiment controller if they could stop. Now, if it bothered them so much, why didn't they just stop? They weren't forced to be there, they could walk out and leave.
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These test subjects had just proven that ordinary people, given just a few words of instruction from an authority figure can be made to do almost anything, even torture! Most of the test subjects were blue collar workers, so they were used to taking orders from people above them, still these results have been used to explain events like the Holocaust, torture of prisoners in prisoner of war camps during World War II, and the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War
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While a few people left, 65% of the 40 test subjects, stayed the whole experiment and "shocked" the learner all the way up to 450 volts (extreme extreme extreme)
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However, some knockoff experiments have been conducted to try and test the same concepts, and see if humanity has changed at all over the past few decades. According to Adam Cohen in a 2008 article in the New York Times, the Milgram obedience experiment repeated by Jerry Burger, Santa Clarita Psychologist with similar results one change: stopped when participants believed they had administered 150 mv shows that humans are basically the same still
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Now that I have talked about the experiment itself, I will now discuss the backlash and the results of Milgram's Obedience Test. Milgram's test has been critcized heavily by scientists and sociologists alike for its unethical qualities. It is psychological torture!
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An article by the Atlantic quoted Peter Baker in Pacific Standard 2013: "To a remarkable degree, "Milgram's early research has come to serve as a kind of all-purpose lightning rod for discussions about the human heart of darkness." So Milgrim's experiment sparked discussion of the dark side of human nature, and brought to light just how cruel humans have the potential to be.
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Again, this phenomenon can be used to explain the Holocaust because while the test subjects were not going to the same lengths as the Germans in the Holocaust, the basic principle remains the same: that people will do whatever they are told, even inflict pain on others, if they are told to by authority figures
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Ever since we were little we've been told to obey. obey our parents, obey our teachers, obey the law. While this is all very important, as Obedience is like the glue that holds society together, I urge you to not just look at what you're doing, but be aware of why you're doing it. Remember, well-behaved people seldom make history.
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In conclusion, I have talked about Stanley Milgrim's obedience experiment, the shocking results, and how these results can be used to explain the horrific actions human beings can inflict upon one another.
