...individuals in authority. One psychology in particular, Stanley Milgram, conducted a series of experiments investigating individuals’ obedient behavior to authoritative figures, whether positive deeds or acts of violence. This paper will summarize Milgram’s famous research as well as analyze the most current research of conforming to authority. Additionally, this paper will examine the current research on Milgram's findings from the early part of the 1960s. Summary of Milgram's Research Stanley Milgram (1963) was a social psychologist who set out to investigate human obedience, especially following the Second World War and in particular, the Holocaust (Milgram, 1963). Milgram’s interest was to conduct a study to answer the research question, are Germans different? However, as Milgram began to develop a tool used for studying obedience, he soon discovered that all individuals are remarkably obedient to people in authority. Milgram chose a naive subject to administer a dangerous electric shock to a victim, which releases voltage ranges from 15 to 450 (Milgram, 1963). Throughout the experiment, a naive participant is directed to administer more intense shocks to a victim as the role of the teacher were given memory tasks by reading lists of two word pairs and the learner was instructed to read them back. As the internal resistance became stronger, the participants can choose to no longer participate with the experiment; however, the behavior preceding this decision is deliberated...
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...Obedience to Authority Making a significant contribution to social psychology, Stanley Milgram focused his studies on authority, specifically on how individuals react to it and are obedient to it. His groundbreaking and famous experiment surprised the world of social psychology, as well as society as a whole (Blass, 2002). Throughout this paper, the reasoning behind Milgram’s study of obedience to authority will be discussed. Additionally, the experiment will be explained, beginning with the formulation and ending with the results. Lastly, the influence of the experiment on social psychology, as well as current research on this topic will be covered. Historical Perspective To gain a better understanding of Milgram’s substantial contributions to social psychology, an examination of the historical period in which he started his career is necessary. According to Mastroianni (2002), World War II had just begun and everyone was still traumatized by the alarming reality of what was happening during the war in Europe. As the Nazi concentration camps were being discovered, the world began to find out about Hitler’s plan to purify the “supreme race” (Mastroianni, 2002). The most shocking part of the holocaust was the plans that Hitler had were being implemented (Mastroianni, 2002). Due to the unfolding events happening during World War II, Blass (2002) pointed out that there were many unanswered questions at the time. As a society, people just could not understand how one person...
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...the Name of Science: A detailed Comparison Between Milgram and Zimbardo’s Internationally Renowned Attempts at Ethics in Social Science Experiments David Baxter Park University SO220 Ethical Issues in Social Science Kris Reichart-Anderson 2 October 2011 Abstract For years many experiments have been scrutinized for their ineffective use or lack of establishment of ethical principles within their research. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s Obedience experiment were ridiculed for the lack of ethics involved. Although these experiments caused unnecessary harm to their subjects they also acted as the foundation for the establishment of the Belmont Report, which in itself, would change research forever. Ethics in the Name of Science Two very controversial experiments have been dissected a thousand times over by some of social science’s most amazing minds as well as the academic populous worldwide. Though the Milgram experiment of 1962 and the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 were entirely different, they both shared the groundbreaking task of identifying the affects of “Obedience to Authority” (Milgram, 1974). Both social scientists believe they had identified the possible risks but fell short in their attempt to alleviate any ethical repercussions. This paper will address the attempts made to ensure moral and ethical studies were accomplished as well as identify where both experiments had major flaws in their plans to ensure no physical...
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...Stanley Milgram and his test to see why people obey even the worst of orders. His studies were compelled by the holocaust. German soldiers were getting hit by war time crimes but all they had to say about them was “I was just obeying orders” so what was it exactly that made these soldiers kill of tons of people even though they knew what they were doing was wrong? What he did was hire people off the streets to do an experiment. He had a paid actor play the role of the learner and the test subject be the teacher. The test was simple the teacher would say a series of words and the learner would have to say them back in proper order. If the learner messed up then the teacher would have to shock him and for every time he messed up the shock would stronger...
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...Science is a field full of discovery, and psychology is always looking for answers and studying the mind, and behavior characteristics of individuals in certain settings. Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale in 1961, was unlike any other, in regards to wanting answers to questions that swirled in his mind (Slater 31). And just as others before him, and others after, he wanted to conduct his own experiments. What did Milgram want to prove or disprove, and how he went about it, was it right or wrong in the eyes of ethics? He was intrigued by the capacity of obedience to authority even to the point of thwarting one owns morals. Milgram grew up in the World War II era, and his family would listen to the radio on a regular...
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...The experiment[edit] Milgram Experiment advertisement Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. These three people fill three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the professor (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher). The subject and the actor both drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher". The actor would always claim to have drawn the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the subject would always be the "teacher". At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.[1] The "teacher" was given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to...
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... is emerging in the area of cancer research, which is sometimes called the “dark matter” of the human genome. Dr. Croce has turned his decades-long pursuit of cancer remedies into a research empire. He has been the recipient of over $86 million in federal grants. He has also earned more than 60 awards. Some accusations have stated that Dr. Croce overstated his expansive claims for therapeutic promise and that his laboratory is focused on creating more papers than on carefully assessing the data from their experiments. Dr. Croce has been fending off allegations of data falsification and other scientific misconduct. An anonymous critic contacted authorities with allegations of falsified date in Dr....
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...For Milgram's other well-known experiment, see Small world experiment. The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T), the subject of the experiment, to give what the latter believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, though in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.[1] The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2] The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" In...
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...funded a what they called, “prison experiment” in 1971, with a goal of finding that the prison environment produces aggressive attitudes? Zimbardo conducted this experiment in the basement of the Psychology department at Stanford University. He took regular everyday college students like you and I made some prisoners and some guards, locked them up in a very small area, and evaluated their behaviors. The question is, how were the guards and the prisoners distinguished between? Now this is where the word evil comes in. In order to make the environment a real “evil” environment the guards wore hats and badges while the prisoners wore nothing but frowsy dresses. This was Zimbardo’s bright idea of an evil environment. So, does perception come into play? Does what each person perceives as evil environments make for a trustworthy study, setting out to support such a claim? Ultimately, did Zimbardo adequately reconstruct a fair representation of a true prison setting or did Zimbardo exaggerate that too? Well, according to two documentary professionals, this study did support that evil environments produces evil behaviors stated not only by Ratnesar’s, but also by Sheere. The funding corporations were kept a secret from the general public for more than 20 years. Just recently on July 4, 2011 a man named Michael Barker put the secret out. He wrote about it in a three part article written on the subject that the Stanford Prison Experiment was flawed in many ways. Why would...
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...Milgram devised his psychological research three months after the start of Adolf Eichmann`s trail to investigate if it was possible for people to go against their values because someone in higher authority told them to do so. The aim of the experiment was to investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another person. Milgram used 40 male participants who were recruited through a newspaper and direct mail advertisement. Each participant was told the aim of the experiment was to see how punishment affected memory. There were two roles in the study, the teacher and the student. The naive participant and a confederate due a slip of paper from a hat which allocated them to their role, but it were rigged so that the naive participant was always the teacher whilst the confederate was the student. The learner and the teacher where taken to the experimental room as the method for this study was a lab experiment. The learner was strapped to an electric chair where the electric shocks can be administered. The experimenter then advised them that the shocks can be extremely painful, but o permanent tissue damage. The next stage involved the teacher testing the learner by giving him one of the words in a pair along with four other words and the learner had to indicate the original word had been paired. The learner`s answer was communicated electronically to the teacher who was in the opposite room,...
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...psychologists. Renowned psychologist, Philip Zimbardo’s research shows that good people will continue to commit evil acts when they are put under certain conditions, eventually generating the loss of their identity. These conditions test the moral strength and personal conscience of intrinsically good people. His research provides a lens for the explanation of the meaning and causes of these recurring evil phenomenon. Thomas Paine’s famous quote, “[these] are the times that try men’s souls,” strongly relates to the conflicts between right and wrong that...
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...Unit Aims This unit aims to develop learners’ understanding of the purpose of research in the health and social care sectors. Learners will be able to explore different research methodologies, enable them to plan and conduct their own research relating to a health or social care issue and evaluate the success of the outcomes. Unit Objectives 1 Understand the function of research in health and social care 2 Understand ethical issues relating to research in health and social care 3 Understand research methodologies relevant to health and social care 4 Be able to plan for a research project 5 Be able to conduct research relevant to a health and social care context 6 Be able to interpret research findings WHAT IS RESEARCH? Research is a planned process in which information is collected systematically for a specific purpose, analysed and reported. Research can have many different functions in health and social care. Functions of Research In pairs read through the following study and discuss the function(s) that the research can be used for. Aim: Hofling (1966) aimed to discover whether nurses would comply with an instruction which would involve them having to infringe both hospital regulations & medical ethics. The intention was to test the strength of the doctor-nurse relationship, regarding how far a nurse would go to comply with doctor’s orders against their own code of professional conduct. Procedure: ...
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...This paper will examine the ethical implications on psychological research of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971. Ethics will be defined and the concept of risk/benefit ratio will be discussed. The Stanford Prison Experiment will be described. Finally, the impact of the Stanford Prison Experiment on psychological research will be evaluated. Ethics Defined Ethics is concerned with the principles of right conduct. In the philosophical use, ethics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the study of morals and how it is that moral decisions are made. Ethics also has a stricter use when dealing with the rules or standards that govern conduct and right behavior (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2000). Risk/Benefit Ratio Ethical approaches to research take into account the risk/benefit ratio. This simply means that the amount of benefit that comes from a study or research clearly outweighs any adverse risks to the subjects involved in the study or research. A study or research is only considered to be ethical if there is favorable risk benefit ratio (Wikipedia, 2008). Background on the Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was created by Professor Philip Zimbardo who led a team of researchers at Stanford University in 1971. The study was designed to observe and study the human responses to captivity by both the inmates and the authority figures. In order to carry out the experiment, a mock prison was created in...
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...2 pts A lecturer has designed an exam about research methodology to measure and test the knowledge of third-years students about the design and quality of research. What is the problem with the following situations. Discuss for the following questions whether this is a reliability problem and/or a validity problem. In the case of the latter give the type of validity problem and EXPLAIN BRIEFLY. 1. Some students had too little time to do their exam and answered their questions too superficially. (1/2 pt) 2. One of the questions was ambiguous. It could be referring to the contents of the subject, but also to the contents of another subject. (1/2 pt) 3. Only a small portion of the content was checked in the exam. (1/2 pt) 4. The exam takes place within two hours. The design of a research usually takes weeks. The exam can therefore not really test the knowledge of research design as the two contexts fundamentally do not match PART II: Milgram’s study: 8 pts During the lectures we have looked at Milgram’s famous study. What we have seen there was a later version from the original. In the original version the subject could not hear the “learner”, just the pounding on the wall. Included you will find the larger part of the paper describing the original experiment1. The paper is mostly a concise description of the research setting. Obviously, it should help that you have watched the video, since it will allow you to understand the paper much more easily. I advice you to read the questions...
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...both external an internal can create a need for change, these include: competition, technology, desire for growth, need to improve processes, and governmental regulations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe and discuss resistance to change as it relates to organizations today. I plan to utilize several scholarly references including the book “Managing Organizational Change” as written by Ian Palmer as this book provides insight into diverse aspect of change. I also plan to utilize Brian Palmers book Making Change Work as it looks at the human side of change management. Resistance in an organizational setting is an expression of reservation which arises as a response or reaction to change. It can be defined as a direct consequence of leadership and management failure. According to research there are three recurring reasons behind this failure. The first is “Gap”: this can be described as the gap between the “big picture” strategic vision and the successful implementation. The second is “Resistance”. Resistance is the hidden and built in resistance to change and a lack of processes and change management methodologies. Finally there is “Impact”. Impact includes the failure to take full account of the impact of changes on those who are affected (Warrilow). According to research conducted, in addition to these reoccurring reasons behind resistance to change, it has also been concluded that resistance is a function of social factors. These social factors include the following: ...
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