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Article Critique

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Submitted By tonyismadman
Words 1143
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Thong Le
11-20-14
CRJU 1100
Hogan

Abstract
What is the purpose of the article, from where is it based, toward what does it hope to strive?
How was the study conducted, who, what, when and where did the study take place?
What were the results of the study, where they as expected?
What were the conclusions drawn from this study, what were the major impacts on the field from the conclusions and conduction of this study, is this kind of impact typical?

The article explains to the readers how the experiment works from start to finish. It also tells us what is necessary to proceed and complete the experiment and the variety of people involved. Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

Stanley Milgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Stanley Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them the intensity of their act (effects on the victim and intensity of the shocks), and are told that they are allowed to leave whenever. Moreover, if the subjects were not misled and were told the truth, this experiment would not have taken place. Stanley Milgram solicits 40 males from various ages and jobs. These subjects are explained that they are part of an experiment that studies the influence of punishment on learning. However, the true purpose is to check their willingness to obey to an authority figure by inflicting pain that they think is real when it is not to a victim. The experimenter, Milgram’s helper, acts as a figure of authority, giving orders to the subjects. The victim, also a collaborator, experiences the pain given by the subject. The pain is given by a shock generator, which is comprised with 30 switches, with a voltage that ranges from 15 to 450 volts. Subjects enter the laboratory one by one. All go through the experiment: 14 of them do not complete the full experiment, while 26 do. The majority of the subjects obey to authority, aware that they are physically hurting the victim. Also there is an unexpected amount of stressful reactions. Following his experiment, Milgram claims that the majority of people obey to authority under most circumstances. His assertion is sufficiently supported as his procedure demonstrates logic and evidence. Before Milgram’s findings, the fact that people were inclined to obey to authority figures was already realized. He just confirmed this belief. Milgram followed effective steps by using precise procedures. He made sure that the experiment reflected features of an actual situation in which a person would obey to an authority figure: offering money as a reward, being under pressure), and mentioning that the person who obeys can withdraw. These features can also be seen in a situation where a soldier is commanded to fire, for instance. A soldier will get a cash reward, is under pressure to obey because he chose to be part of the military, and he knows that he can resign at any time. Milgram created an experiment so precise and detailed that more than enough evidence was demonstrated. In this experiment, subjects are explained that this is “a ‘learning experiment’ to study the effects of punishment on memory" (4). Yet, the real intention here is to measure the participants’ compliance towards the experimenter. This controversy is unethical as subjects are volunteering for a cause that does not exist. They are misled since they are not exposed to the real purpose of this study. Nevertheless, this experiment was appropriate. Throughout the process, participants are exposed to various indications about the intensity of the experiment. If the question about how painful it is for the victim arises, the experimenter states that “Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage" (28). Subjects therefore know about the impact on the victim. Also, participants control the shock generator, which clearly indicates the voltage levels, ranging from Slight Shock to XXX. They are fully conscious of the voltage level delivered. Another indication about the intensity of the experiment is when the victim “…pounds on the wall of the room in which he is bound to the electric chair” (23) after being shocked at 300 volts. Henceforth, the victim does not provide any other answer. Still, only 5 participants terminate the experiment, while the rest go on. These indications are available to the subjects during the experiment; however, they continued to obey knowing they are allowed to stop. Lastly, Milgram uses a method that is misleading—since he does not share the real purpose of the experiment with the participants—for a good cause. If participants were told the idea behind this study, it would have not even take place. It is only with a dishonest research reason that the results would be true. Besides, this experiment became a landmark since many researchers refer to it even till this day. Milgram states that most would obey to an authority figure even under harmful circumstances. He demonstrated this with specific features and allowed the reader to understand his study with straightforward information. His experiment was also appropriate rather than unethical. The intensity of the experiment was displayed clearly and participants understood that they were allowed to withdraw from the experiment at any time. Ultimately, this landmark study could not have been if it was not for the researcher to mislead the subjects with the purpose of this study.

Works Cited

Stanley Milgram. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Across the Disciplines: Academic Writing and Reading. Rogers, Jacqueline McLeod and Catherine G. Taylor. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2011. 269-81. Print.

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