...Discussion of the Stanley Milgram’s "Perils of Obedience" As Milgram writes in his article, for some people obedience is a deeply “ingrained behavior tendency”, which can create an impulse that can override past ideas in morality and ethics. While his experiment focused closely on the psychology behind response to obedience, his central idea conveyed substantial themes which bore on conceptions of professional ethics. One of these themes involved the previously underestimated significances of the potency of authority in influencing decision-making, even ones that go against one’s own conscientious imperatives. As most of us are “indoctrinated” in our childhood to develop a basic conception of values and virtues, one of the things we as human beings have grasped, through many phases in our evolution as societal creatures, is the importance of obedience to some form of authority. This scheme, now deeply ingrained in our psychology, plays a very strong role in the decisions we make daily, including playing a part towards trumping moral values, including possibly a code of professional ethics. [EXAMPLE] Individual morality, according to Milgram’s opinion, can be heavily compromised in the face of authority figures, in fact suggesting that in truth, in our society, individuality may be something that does not exist at all, and that the vast majority of our decision making may have sociological origins. In fact as Stanley Milgram showed, the weakening of the individual’s moral conscience...
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...reasoning. Troubled by situations of this nature, Stanley Milgram held a collection of experiments that his book “Obedience to Authority” outlines. Milgram tells us that “the aim of the study was to find when and how people defy authority in the face of clear moral imperatives” ( 4). Milgram found that there are social forces which allow populations to commit morally conflicting acts against other populations. The fundamental variable for this influence is ideology; which is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “a systematic body of concepts, especially about human life or culture”(“ideology”). Ideologies accompanied by social contagions, admit ordinary individuals to transgress in inhumane conformed evils. The obedient subjects of Milgram’s studies and the Nazi soldiers alike are not all necessarily sadistic psychopaths. Rather, they’re a result of ideological social conformity. It has been a commonly accepted idea that those who participated in the holocaust were all individually psychopaths, but conformity to a corrupt authority’s dogma influences ordinary people to behave malevolently. Between 1941- 1945, fifty-five thousand Nazi soldiers worked at death and work camps (Wikipedia, World War 2 casualties). Considering that there were so many participants in this genocide, it is not logical to simply label all of them as psychotic. Hannah Abrendt , the author of ”Eichmann is Jerusalem” , became baffled at Eichmann’s role in coordinating the final solution of the Jewish population;...
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...Questioning Authority: A Rethinking of the Infamous Milgram Experiments By Liliana Segura, AlterNet Posted on February 12, 2009 Between 1963 and 1974, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that would become one of the most famous social psychology studies of the 20th century. His focus was how average people respond to authority, and what he revealed stunned and disturbed people the world over. Under the pretense of an experiment on "learning" and "memory," Milgram placed test subjects in a lab rigged with fake gadgetry, where a man in a lab coat instructed them to administer electrical shocks to a fellow test subject (actually an actor) seated in another room in "a kind of miniature electric chair." Participants were told they were the "teachers" in the scenario and given a list of questions with which to quiz their counterparts (the "learners"). If the respondent answered incorrectly to a question, he got an electric shock as punishment. The shocks were light at first -- 15 volts -- and became stronger incrementally, until they reached 450 volts -a level labeled "Danger: Severe Shock." The actors were never actually electrocuted, but they pretended they were. They groaned, shouted, and, as the current became stronger, begged for relief. Meanwhile, the man in the lab coat coolly told the test subjects to keep going. To people's horror, Milgram discovered that a solid majority of his subjects -- roughly two-thirds -- were willing to administer the highest levels...
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...investigation at any time and be assured of confidentiality. However, in some cases these rules can not be fully complied with and only after safeguards have been put in place, especially for children or those that have a disability, can deviation from the guidelines take place. However, there will always be conflict between participants and psychologists needs or expectations of the experiment. In some experimental situations the participant will not be fully informed of what they are taking part in so the psychologist can achieve a non-biased outcome from the results. This could be classed as harmful to the participants as the outcome of being deceived could lead to psychological harm. In Milgram’s (1963 cited in Hill, 2001 p24) study participants took part in the obedience to authority experiment. At this time the ethical guidelines were not as strict and this has brought outrage to some of his critics, Baumrind (1964) in particular is extremely critical of his approach and outcome of the experiment. Baumrind (1964) argued that the participants were not protected from harm throughout the experiment and they did not have fully informed consent. Her concerns were that the participants could have been psychology affected long term and the end result does not justify the means. She also implied that the participants were forced by the experimenter to shock the confederate; this was not the case as the participants were free to leave at any time....
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...The Stanford Prison Experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life. Subjects were randomly assigned to play the role of "prisoner" or "guard". Those assigned to play the role of guard were given sticks and sunglasses; those assigned to play the prisoner role were arrested by the Palo Alto police department, deloused, forced to wear chains and prison garments, and transported to the basement of the Stanford psychology department, which had been converted into a sort of jail. What was the lesson learned from Zimbardo’s (1971) Stanford Prison experiment about the influence of social roles on an individual’s behavior? Several of the guards became progressively more sadistic — particularly at night when they thought the cameras were off, despite being picked by chance out of the same pool as the prisoners. The experiment very quickly got out of hand. A riot broke out on day two. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash all over his body upon finding out that his "parole" had been turned down. After only 6 days (of a planned two weeks), the experiment was shut down, for fear that one of the prisoners would be seriously hurt. Although the intent of the experiment was to examine captivity, its result has been used to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive...
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...I chose to write about the ethics of the Stanford Prison Experiment led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. I think a number of factors in this study would not pass current ethical standards set by the American Psychological Association (APA). The first is I believe that even though all of the participants of the study were given informed consent before the start of the experiment, I don’t believe that the subjects were aware of the physical and mental humiliation that they would have to endure during its course. At the very start, the subjects were taken from in front of their homes in front of neighbors by armed police officers. They were then taken to the prison blindfolded and made to strip down naked in a degrading manner in order to purposely humiliate them. They shaved their heads in order to take away any of the prisoners personal identity. I think there was also great deception on behalf of the researchers when the participants’ families came to visit them. The guards cleaned the cells, clean shaved the prisoners, fed them a large meal and played music over the loud speakers to make the visitor blind of the real situation. This manipulation shows that Dr. Zimbardo knew that the physical conditions of the prison were unsanitary and could have posed a health risk, and that the treatment of the prisoners was in fact un-ethical. According to this website http://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html Zimbardo claimed that he could have not predicted that any of these things could...
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...But how does this need affect an individual? Social psychologists have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that, through various forms of social influence, groups can change their members' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In her essay "Group Minds," Doris Lessing discusses our paradoxical ability to call ourselves individuals and our inability to realize that groups define and influence us. We, as humans, hold individualism in the highest regard yet fail to realize that groups diminish our individuality. Lessing writes, "when we're in a group, we tend to think as that group does... but we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group" (p. 334). Groups have the tendency to generate norms, or standards for behavior in certain situations. Not following these norms can make you stand out and, therefore, groups have the ability to influence our thoughts and actions in ways that are consistent with the groups'. Lessing's essay helps set the context to understand the experiments that social psychologists Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo conducted to explain conformity and obedience. Solomon Asch's experiment in "Opinions and Social Pressure" studied a subject's ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by the experimenter to claim two obvious mismatched lines...
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...trustworthy and which area of knowledge should these ways of knowing be applied to, to get a better sense of who one is? Human sciences provides a sense of how we behave in the social context but not a sense of who we are at a personal level while Natural sciences while Thesis (….) I will be limiting my areas of knowledge to Human Sciences and Natural Sciences. Human Sciences, Psychology in particular, does attempt to answer questions about why and how people think, feel, and behave as they do. In a sense, it does attempt to give humans a ‘sense of how they behave’ but it doesn’t really give us a sense of who we ‘are’. Let’s consider Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience to authority. Stanley Milgram was a Yale University Psychologist who, in the 1960s, conducted a series of obedience experiments to test that if an authority figure ordered one to deliver a 400-volt electrical shock to another person, would one follow orders? [3]. When the same...
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...are so prevalent in society. Are all people capable of committing crimes of obedience given the right situation? Is there a certain disposition or combination of personality traits that leads to crimes of obedience? Situations are unique and dispositions vary; attempting to distinguish what causes these occurrences is a complex task that has been the subject of numerous studies, yet no concrete answers are found. Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments ignited the flame of a subject that, instead of diminishing over time and becoming obsolete as a result of improved methods and new ideologies, has remained at the forefront of social and behavioral psychology. Modern research faces the critical challenge of attempting to study obedience under much more restrictive guidelines than previous studies; the results that are produced can only hope to shed light on one component of obedience and use other studies to synthesize a more complete explanation. The predecessor to all of this modern research was the Milgram obedience experiment and all of its variations. It has remained a fixture of social psychology for so long for several reasons: the enormity of the results (65% of a normal population of American men is willing to administer dangerous shocks to innocent learners), its magnitude (over 1000 people tested in 18 variations), its clarity in defining how situation influences the obedience of participants, and the questions it raised about ethics in experimental methods...
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...Achieve Goals Set by Managers C. How Goals Combined with Rewards Can Encourage Unethical Behavior D. Practical Advice for Managers: Goals, Rewards, and Discipline E. Recognize the Power of Indirect Rewards and Punishments F. Can Managers Really Reward Ethical Behavior? G. What about the Role of Discipline? H. Practical Advice for Managers: Discipline V. “Everyone’s Doing It” A. People Follow Group Norms B. Rationalizing Unethical Behavior C. Practical Advice for Managers: Group Norms VI. People Fulfill Assigned Roles A. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment B. Roles at Work C. Conflicting Roles can Lead to Unethical Behavior D. Roles Can Also Support Ethical Behavior E. Practical Advice for Managers: Roles VII. People Do What They are Told A. The Milgram Experiments B. Obedience to Authority at Work C. Practical Advice for Managers: Obedience to Authority VIII. Responsibility Is Diffused in Organizations A. “Don’t Worry – We’re Taking Care of Everything” B. Diffusing Responsibility in Groups C....
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...The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram Stanley Milgram’s “ The Perils of Obedience” shows that some people can obey authority even when it requires committing terrible actions within their society. Milgram begins his essay by describing what obedience is and how deeply ingrained of a behavior tendency that it is. He then sets up an experiment at Yale University that will push the limits of human obedience. He has a “teacher” give out a series of simple word pairs for the “learner”. If the learner gets a word pair wrong then the teacher gives out a series of shock ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The teacher who is the real subject in the experiment does not know that the learner is a paid actor who does not receive any actual shocks. The motivation behind this experiment for Milgram was to test just how far people would go to obey the command of an authority figure. Milgram’s theory is that the subject will have total control of what they are doing and will disobey the authority figure when inflicting pain onto a hopeless human being. One of his subjects, Gretchen Brandt, is participating with the experiment when the learner got the word pair wrong she showed the self control to stop shocking to not continue. Milgram thought that this is how the majority of subjects would react, “Her behavior is the very embodiment of what I envisioned would be true for almost all subject”(Milgram, 44). Brandt simply wasn’t worried about rejecting the authority if it meant that she no longer...
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...Stanford Prison Experiment PSYCH/620 May 31, 2015 Dr. Al Clark Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment Dr. Phillip Zimbardo of Stanford University led a team of researchers to conduct a social experiment on the effects of imposed social roles in the penal system. Internal dispositions changed to adapt to the confinement of the prison. The behavior observed of the participants was morally repugnant and apprehensible in response to role of authority. Participants assigned to a prisoner role broke down in response to captivity. The study focused on behavioral attributes that attributed sadistic behavior to the prison environment opposed to an innate tendency towards a cruel personality (Zimbardo, 2007). The impact of Dr. Zimbardo’s study on social psychology Dr. Zimbardo’s classic psychological study relating to the psychological effects of the prisoner and prison guard relationship was momentous to social psychology. The study was influential to social psychology in the way that we were able to understand the circumstances that enable a normal, caring individual to carryout sadistic acts. Zimbardo’s prison experiment was a prison simulation based on Milgram’s research on obedience to authority. The study confirmed notions on how situations could completely corrupt human behavior (Stanley, 2006). Relevance of the Study in Relation to Contemporary World Issues The experiment influenced the sensitivity...
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...Enron’s CFO. He helped the company by hiding the losses with a “Tom Ponzi’s scheme”. 4. What is Sherron Watkins significance to Enron? She was the Vice President at Enron. She is considered by many to be the whistleblower that helped to uncover the Enron scandal. She wrote a concerned internal email message to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay warning him that the in the financial reports didn’t make sense. 5. Why did Wall Street wait until the collapse of Enron to investigate the company? Was there a diffusion of responsibility whereby the executives at Enron told thmeselves that their behavior was okay because the bankers and the lawyers knew what they were doing? 6. In the Stanley Milgram experiment, why were 50% of the suspects willing to shock to the death? In what way does the Milgram's experiment help to explain the behavior of the Enron traders? 7. What is your opinion of the movie? Did you learn anything new about the Enron...
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...AS Psychology - Unit Two Social Psychology Social Influence Student workbook Name: .................................................................................. Form: ................................................................................... Teacher: .............................................................................. Specification requirements Social psychology Candidates will be expected to demonstrate: • Knowledge and understanding of concepts, theories and studies in relation to individual differences • Skills of analysis, evaluation and application in relation to individual differences • Knowledge and understanding of research methods associated with this area of psychology • Knowledge and understanding of ethical issues associated with this area of psychology. |Content outline | |Social influence |Conformity (majority influence) and explanations of why people conform, including informational | | |social influence and normative social influence | | | | | |Types...
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...Achieve Goals Set by Managers C. How Goals Combined with Rewards Can Encourage Unethical Behavior D. Practical Advice for Managers: Goals, Rewards, and Discipline E. Recognize the Power of Indirect Rewards and Punishments F. Can Managers Really Reward Ethical Behavior? G. What about the Role of Discipline? H. Practical Advice for Managers: Discipline V. “Everyone’s Doing It” A. People Follow Group Norms B. Rationalizing Unethical Behavior C. Practical Advice for Managers: Group Norms VI. People Fulfill Assigned Roles A. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment B. Roles at Work C. Conflicting Roles can Lead to Unethical Behavior D. Roles Can Also Support Ethical Behavior E. Practical Advice for Managers: Roles VII. People Do What They are Told A. The Milgram Experiments B. Obedience to Authority at Work C. Practical Advice for Managers: Obedience to Authority VIII. Responsibility Is Diffused in Organizations A. “Don’t Worry – We’re Taking Care of Everything” B. Diffusing Responsibility in Groups C....
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