John Darley’s criticism focuses on how the findings of the obedience experiments are applied to historical or real-world situations. He points out many ways in which the behavior of the obedience subjects in Milgram’s study differs drastically from the behavior of many others who commit atrocities: Nazi doctors or concentration camp executioners, for instance (Darley 133-134). However, since Darley’s criticism focuses on the behavioral differences between the obedience study and historical events, Milgram responds in a strong, convincing way. Referring to the process of comparing laboratory studies with real-world situations, Milgram writes, “The problem of generalizing from one to the other does not consist of point-for-point comparison between one and the other... but depends on whether one has reached a correct theoretical understanding of…
Basically, he had trained an accomplice who would pretend to have electric shocks. The experimental subjects were placed in front of a dial, which they were told would administer an increasing levels of electric shocks to the actor. They asked the subject a series of straightforward word pair questions, and when he got the answers wrong, they had to give an electric shock. The subjects were told that this was part of an experiment, by someone in a white coat. In one case, the subject was informed that the person they were administering "shocks" to had a heart condition.…
To what degree should people follow orders of superiors due to their authority? A Few Good Men is a movie where the moral difference between right and wrong is very unclear in the name of following authority. Professors of sociology, Kelman and Hamilton worked together on “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience” where they tried to apply reason to the soldiers who committed a massacre of unarmed women and children during the Vietnam War. Theodore Dalrymple is a physician who wrote “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” by analyzing Milgram’s electric shock torture experiment to shine light on when is right to obey to authority, while he emphasizes not to follow authority blindly. These pieces can be used to understand how Marines were able to kill a fellow Marine in Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men.…
Over the past century, the field of Psychology has prospered, giving way to a more in depth knowledge and understanding of people’s social interactions with one another and what drives those connections. 20th century psychologist, Stanley Milgram, executed a series of Obedience to Authority test on random participants. As seen in the YouTube videos online and in class, Milgram’s study found that over 65% of the participants carried out the experiment, despite potentially hurting someone, due to the authority figure urging them to continue.…
Milgram’s findings, as read in the article “If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You?”, apply to the first case of a manager and her fiancé ordering a teenage girl to strip and her following their commands. Milgram’s data suggested that humans are obedient even to the extent of blindly following authority. His findings were demonstrated by his experimental subjects who continued to increase the voltage to electrocute the learner, despite the subject’s moral code conflicting with the idea of…
In 1963, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a series of social psychology experiments to study the conditions under which the people are obedient to authorities and personal conscience. The purpose of his experiment was to determine whether or not people were particularly obedient to the higher authority who instructed them to perform various acts even if they violate their own morals and ethics. It was one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology as it has inspired other researchers to explore what makes people question authority and more importantly, what leads them to follow orders. There were several replications of his experiment and the results were identical to those reported by Milgram about how…
A well known study into obedience is the Milgram experiment, Milgram had a found interest in why during the Second World War hundreds of people obeyed the orders of others in authority. Millions of innocent people were killed on command. He wanted to test out this potential destructive obedience in a laboratory. Each participant out…
Many theories and questions are raised from the problem of obedience to authority. What can make another person be obedient to another? Why do some people obey others when they know what they’re doing is wrong? This is a problem for the human population and it demands reasoning, explanation, and examination. We must reflect on what many experts have examined in the field, and draw some conclusions. There are many experts that have studied obedience to authority, and why people still obey even though it may be wrong. In the military following orders is the key to your survival. Even if your superior officers tell you to kill someone or shoot someone it may…
Milgram’s study was done after the trial of Adolf Eichmann. This was after the holocaust where 6 million Jews were murdered. This trial displayed an example of destructive obedience where people were said to have complied with what they were told to do, even if it had a negative impact on others, which in this case was murdering innocent people, although being completely mentally aware of what they were being asked to do and yet still carried out the task.…
In this chapter on the research of obedience, studying the psychological actions and reactions, the implications brought forth are the surprising effects of simple commands and the subliminal influence. The articles “The Perils of Obedience”, by Stanley Milgram, and “Opinions and Social Pressure”, by Solomon E. Asch, both exhibit the traits of simple, ordinary test subjects following orders and actions by someone who is illustrated to have power or the general consensus but realistically do not.…
Stanley Milgram (1963) explains why 65% of the people did something they felt was morally wrong, that is they went into an agentic state and exhibited some aspects of denial in order to avoid moral strain. However, Milgram does not explain why 65% did not obey. In other words, it does not explain individual differences as the volunteers in Milgrams experiment seemed to resist the pressure and Milgram does not explain that.…
These results lead to the same conclusions in both experiments: we are socialised to recognise authority and to react with obedience; having started to obey it becomes harder and harder to say ‘no’. The higher level of obedience in Meeus & Raaijmakers’ study comparing to that in Milgram’s study shows that it’s easier to obey orders to use psychological violence than physical violence.…
In conclusion, the Milgram’s study on obedience clearly showed that human were more obedient than we would image. This experiment is a wake-up call for me, for it helps me to review my own value systems and makes me aware of the destructiveness of obedience. Furthermore, the study has somehow explained how easily normal people could be influenced into supporting and participating in atrocities such as the Nazi Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge’s genocide, and the practices of ISIS on a mass scale. Any ordinary people can become an evil if obedience allows them to avoid making their own decisions as well as taking responsibility for their actions. On one hand, obedience is good when people obey the law and adhere to moral codes. It is important to…
The article, Behavioral Study of Obedience written by Dr. Stanley Milgram of Yale University was published in 1963 by the American Psychological Association (Milgram, 1963). In this article we explore one of the most widely studied articles of obedience in psychology. Dr. Milgram conducted an experiment that focused on the connection between the conscience and obedience to authority or commands. The first of many experiments took place in July 1961 after the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was accused of war crimes such as enforcement of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies and genocide. Milgram sought to find out if Germans were more obedient to the authority figures. His experiment was designed to answer the following question: Was Eichmann and his million accomplices simply following orders? To answer this and many other questions, Milgram selected participants for this experiment by advertising for male participants to participate in a study of learning at Yale University.…
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." This is from 'perils of obedience' by Stanley milgram. I enjoyed this…