...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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...The perils of obedience "Be quiet! Write this down." How often have you heard this, or something like it? We hear or come across commands, instructions, directions and orders every day. What is it that makes us obey (or disobey) them? Millions of people were killed in Nazi Germany in concentration camps but Hitler couldn't have killed them all, nor could a handful of people. What made all those people follow the orders they were given? Were they afraid, or was there something in their personality that made them like that? In order to obey authority, the obeying person has to accept that it is legitimate (i.e. rightful, legal) for the command to be made of them. Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure. It is assumed that without such an order the person would not have acted in this way. Obedience occurs when you are told to do something (authority), whereas conformity happens through social pressure (the norms of the majority). Obedience involves a hierarchy of power / status. Therefore, the person giving the order has a higher status than the person receiving the order. Adolf Eichmann was executed in 1962 for his part in organizing the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people, as well as gypsies, communists and trade unionists were transported to death camps and murdered in Nazi Germany and surrounding countries under Nazi control. Eichmann was...
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...conform to the orders of authority in order to promote obedience as a social virtue. This often leads man to equate disobedience with sin, which traces as far back as the biblical account of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. However, neither disobedience nor obedience could exist without the power of an authority figure to dictate the rules and restraints of submission. In his article “The Perils of Obedience,” Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram asserts that authority as a whole is an essential component of social living and that obedience to this authority is a social behavior unknowingly entrenched in a majority of the population. Milgram’s scientific review explores this claim as he shares data from his experiment in which subjects blindly obey someone they believe to be an expert, simply due to his prompting. Supported with reactions...
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...Analysis: Stanley Milgram’s The Perils of Obedience In The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram creates an experiment to see how individuals follows rules and orders. In this experiment, an experimenter conducts the study, a teacher carries out the experimenter’s commands, and a learner, who is an actor, takes memory tests. The teacher asks the learner questions, and if the learner gets them wrong, the teacher must shock him with increasingly higher voltage. The teacher then faces a tough decision: should he finish the experiment, or should he defy authority? This question proves to be important for the study, because it focuses on how individuals react to authoritative figures, even if the figure’s commands go against their moral code. This...
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...“The Perils of Obedience” Response Rochelle Jarmer Composed 2 Karsten Piper Due: 06-23-15 “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram is a disturbing and thought-provoking article that details the author’s experimentation in human obedience. The article describes an experiment in which the “teacher”, is put in a position to administer a shock to the “learner” when a wrong answer is given during a test. The teacher is left unaware that the learner is an actor and not being shocked and, in fact, the focus of the experiment is the teacher himself. I think this article is particularly disturbing because people tend to believe that evil only lurks in the shadows. It is terrifying to realize that any ordinary person can commit cruel and horrible...
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...article, "The Perils of Obedience", Stanley Milgram describes his experiment on obedience in everyday citizens. As the "teacher" in his experiment reads word pairs to the designated "learner", the teacher is further instructed by the experimenter in the back of the room to administer shocks of increasing strength every time a word is missed. Through the increasing levels of shock the experimenter can then hear the agonized screams of the learner who, in reality, is not actually being administered any amount of shock. Instead the voices heard are merely a recording, deceiving the teacher in order to study their reactions. The willingness of the teacher to continue was tested when being urged on by the experimenter. Feeling as if they will fail the experiment if they fail to continue, most people do. In Herbert C. Kelmans and Lee Hamilton's article, "The My...
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...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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...The Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram and the example of the Milgram-related Hoax Case informs humanity that we need to stay true to our moral conscience, independent with our thoughts and fully incorporated in the decisions we make, they remind us of the importance of a clean political process and the right to be informed they warn us of the dangers that can come from surrendering to the decision of the majority and the blind obedience to authority. In “Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram he states, “The form and shape of society and the way it is developing have much to do with it. There was a time, perhaps, when people were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as...
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...Obedience, Authority and Moral Conflict Thomas E. Colley ENGL 213, P11: Writing in the Social and Natural Sciences Dr. Joan O’Leary January 28, 2010 Obedience, Authority and Moral Conflict In the 1963 report, “The Perils of Obedience,” psychologist Stanley Milgram detailed the results of experiments on the obedient response of individuals to the commands of an authority figure while experiencing moral conflict. Milgram conducted his experiments with diverse subjects in many countries. The trials consisted of three participants: the learner, the teacher and the experimenter. Witnessed by the teacher, the experimenter strapped the learner to an apparatus that appeared to be “a miniature electric chair.” The teacher tested the learner on his ability to remember the second word of a pair when prompted by reading the first word. Seated in front of an instrument panel in a separate room, the teacher administered an electric shock of increasing intensity to the learner for any memory errors. Milgram provided a detailed description that left little doubt that the shock and intensity administered was the result of the teacher’s manipulation of this device. Unbeknownst to the teacher, the learner was part of the trial and responded to the shocks in an increasingly agonizing display. Milgram’s findings, which directly contradicted his predictions, demonstrated full compliance in 60-85% of the participants. Obedience in the face of moral conflict was directly...
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...Luke Saxon Dr. Loper EN 101-129 23 November 2014 Argumentative Synthesis Final Obedience to authority comes somewhat naturally to most people because of the world we live in, every civilization has some type of authority. However, power brings on great responsibilities, and not all authority figures have the ability to handle that. For years psychologists have studied obedience to authority to learn new things about humans and our interaction with those giving the orders. For me exploring this topic has led me to believe that power has the ability to corrupt, situations are a key factor in decision making, and most people are inclined to obey authority. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is a popular quote from Lord Acton. This statement has been proven true time and time again throughout history. A few good examples come from the Stanford Prison Experiment, where some of the students that played the role of guard abused the power they had been given for the experiment. During the testing two main guards took it upon themselves to become the authority of the prison even though they were not asked to do so. This shows that even a small amount of power can start to affect the way you act. They began taunting the prisoners, calling them demeaning names, and even forced them to do unnecessary exercises at times simply because they had the power to. Not only does power have the ability to corrupt, but it has the ability to do it quickly at times...
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...Third Paper: Analysis Obedience and disobedience to the authority has always been a favorite topic of psychologists and researchers. Stanley Milgram’s experiments shows that people are more often to submit themselves toward authority as compared to the people who disobey. According to Milgram, the pillars or support of the society is being threatened by disobedience. On the contrary, Erich Fromm rejects the theory of “obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice”(621). Human history has formed by an act of disobedience by Adam and Eve, who were living in heaven obediently but a little act of disobedience changed everything. Fromm claims that their act of disobedience opened their eyes. After disobedience, man created his own heaven. Acts of disobedience evolved and changed by time. Milgram’s and Fromm’s theories are opposite to each other, one supports obedience and other doesn’t....
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...Abstract Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, performed one of the most famous studies conducted at the time, in 1963. Stanley Milgram was very interested in the effects of interactions on behavior. In his experiment, he wanted to test the limits of the participant's compliance and obedience, under conditions of extreme distress. Milgram wanted to have a better understanding of how far people would go to obey orders given by someone in an authority role; even if that meant that, the orders contradicted their personal beliefs. The subjects of the study believed they had to obey what the authority figure's guidance that was conveyed to them. The guidelines were to shock other participants ultimately if they answered incorrectly; even silence was an incorrect answer. The experiment, to this day, is one that is studied, because it showed how many people, no matter gender, economic stance, or race, would inflict pain, and even death, to obey someone who has more authority than they do. The subjects were given a set of rules to abide by. The study was to see how the subjects responded to the effects of punishment on memory. The Milgram Experiment There were two main pieces of this study; there was the "learner" and the "experimenter". There was a list of teachers, the teachers were told to give shocks to the learners, the shocks were not real, and however, the participants did not know this. The participants thought the students were being shocked...
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...Running Head: POWER OF SITUATION AND OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY The Power of the Situation in Milgram's Obedience Experiments Ahsan Chishty Ohlone College POWER OF SITUATION AND OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY The Power of the Situation in Milgram's Obedience Experiments Stanley Milgram is a name universally known for the Yale professor who shocked the world with his experiments on obedience. In 1961, Milgram along with many other colleagues devised an experiment after receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct an experiment in response to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Milgram wanted to know if Germans under the rule of authority figures did exactly what they were instructed to do by those of higher power than them due to the fact that many of the explanations for the Nazi atrocities was simply that Nazi soldiers were following orders. After placing an ad in the New Haven Register for a learning experiment on the study of memory. According to Thomas Blass (2009), offering participants $4.50 and a paid bus fare for an hour of their time seemed to be the biggest factor that attracted people to the ad but several of the participants also agreed to be a part of the study to learn something about themselves, expand their curiosity about psychology, or because they were fascinated by memory and hoped to understand it better through an experiment like Milgram's. The subjects were introduced to a man in a lab coat who...
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...The Physiological Enigma The beliefs one person cherishes are drastically altered in the face of adversity from a loving care to fear for their own safety, survival, and well being. When a person is in viewing distance of an event or atrocity, their mind is neither set on helping the victim or restraining the assaulter, their only thought is to protect themselves, protect themselves as the same tragedy may fall upon them. Medevitt infers from his research that “witnesses” of abuse are terrified that the abuser may use “retaliation” if they decide to report the incident (Chen 21). Proving that someone in a situation of adversity does not think of what physical support they can provide to save the victim or restrain the assaulter, transforming the only safe haven into a vegetable. In another instance a boy much younger than the man previously mentioned responds with the same acts of determined cowardice. Elie Weisel remarks on his fathers’ suffering as being “afraid”, that under no circumstance should his “head” be struck by a blunt object, all the while allowing his father to receive numerous blows (Weisel 111). Also eluding that people truly contain more fear or concern for themselves rather than others, and express so in a way that appears completely rational to them at that moment. While this all seems good and well to a majority of people, there are a few who stand out above the rest to dictate their innermost beliefs. This person is Prozi who with incredible disbelief disagrees...
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...William Barclay criticised Fletcher in his 1971 text Ethics in a Permissive Society, observing that “we do well still to remember that there are laws that we break at our peril”, insinuating that situation ethics would fail to provide sufficient moral guidance if it replaced law, because humanity cannot survive with total antinomianism. However, one would postulate that the theory is useful, as it allows for moral development at a personal level. It is successful in the exceptional cases for which it was designed, as it is “able to take the least bad of two bad options,” which legalistic and absolutist approaches cannot. Barclay criticised situation ethics as being too permissive, and when individuals are given the opportunity to make their own moral decisions, such “freedom can become licence… selfishness and even cruelty.” Pope Pius XII regarded the theory as “an individualistic and subjective appeal… to justify decisions in opposition to the natural law or God’s revealed will”; it was seen to encourage immoral behaviour because morality would not be derived from God, as it would be if individuals continued to follow the Decalogue. He later prohibited it in Roman...
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