- The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure.
- Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor.
- The majority of participants obeyed, even when the individual being shocked screamed in pain.
- The experiment has been widely criticized on ethical and scientific grounds.
What were the conclusions Milgram drew from his experiment?
The Milgram experiment suggested that human beings are susceptible to obeying authority, but it also demonstrated that obedience is not inevitable. Sources Baker, Peter C. “Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram's Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?”
What are the ethical issues of the Milgram experiment?
ETHICAL PROBLEMS. There are 3 main ethical issues with the Milgram experiment: deception, protection of participants, and right to withdrawal. Each of those issues, as well as Milgram’s argument, is discussed in detail below: 1) Deception – The participants actually believed they were shocking a real person, and were unaware the learner was ...
What is a major problem with the original Milgram study?
The original Milgram study has a number of major problems. His study was unethical because Milgram lied to his respondents. The Asch conformity study has a major flaw. In ignoring the importance of race, class, and gender in conformity, Asch failed to recognize the importance of these factors.
Why is the Milgram experiment so controversial?
There is ongoing debate about whether the Milgram experiment was ethical. Opponents argue that because participants were not informed of the experiment’s topic beforehand, it inflicted mental stress and anxiety to the participants.
What Were the Milgram Experiments?
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act." - Stanley Milgram, 1974
Why Is Milgram's Study Still So Powerful?
So why does Milgram's experiment maintain such a powerful hold on our imaginations, even decades after the fact? Perry believes that despite all its ethical issues and the problem of never truly being able to replicate Milgram's procedures, the study has taken on the role of what she calls a "powerful parable."
What would happen if the 300 volt level was reached?
Once they reached the 300-volt level, the learner would bang on the wall and demand to be released. Beyond this point, the learner became completely silent and refused to answer any more questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and deliver a further shock. 2
How much did each participant get paid for participating in the Milgram experiment?
In exchange for their participation, each person was paid $4.50. 1
How many people refused to go along with Milgram's experiments?
When other people refused to go along with the experimenter's orders, 36 out of 40 participants refused to deliver the maximum shocks. 6
What percentage of participants in Milgram's study delivered the maximum shock?
The average prediction was that around 1% of participants would deliver the maximum shock. 3 In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks. 4
Why were participants carefully screened?
Participants were also carefully screened to eliminate those who might experience adverse reactions to the experiment.
What are the implications of the Milgram experiment?
Real Life Implications of the Milgram Experiment One of the most controversial studies in the history of psychology is Stanley Milgram’s Obedience experiment, which revealed the power of obedience and the horrendous acts people would commit when faced by an authority figure.
Where did the Milgram experiment take place?
The Milgram. Milgram Study Paper; Analyzed and Discussed The Milgram experiment took place in an underground room in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, situated on the campus of Yale University, in July 1961. Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram led the experiment.
What did Milgram show about obedience?
Milgram showed that obedience is a very powerful tool and anyone can be subjected to be under the influence. Another similar experiment is the Stanford Prison experiment, which had college students acting like guards and inmates. The participants took their roles very seriously.
What was Stanley Milgram's research on obedience?
A Consideration of the Ends Justifying the Means of Milgram’s Research Into Obedience Stanley Milgram carried out a series of studies in 1963 and 1973 related to obedience to authority. These studies have been viewed as controversial ever since, mainly because of the ethical issues they raise. Although he was able to obtain conclusive results and discover that under certain situational influences anybody might obey orders that went against their conscience; the way in
What was the Zimbardo experiment?
In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of. Read More.
Why was the memory experiment controversial?
controversy have surrounded the study since the results were first published. Predictions made by psychologists before the experiment proved dramatically inaccurate. The experiment led volunteers to believe they were administering increasingly painful and dangerous electric shocks to another volunteer for the purposes of a study on memory. The memory study was a ploy, the real focus was on the behaviour of participants inflicting pain on another person. Participants often acted against their own moral
Who led the Yale experiment?
Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram led the experiment. The experiment was met to measure the willingness of participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform an experiment that was against their moral views. Milgram’s participants for his experiments were from all backgrounds. The subjects.
Why is Milgram's experiment controversial?
Milgram’s experiment has been widely criticized on ethical grounds. Milgram’s participants were led to believe that they acted in a way that harmed someone else, an experience that could have had long-term consequences. Moreover, an investigation by writer Gina Perry uncovered that some participants appear to not have been fully debriefed after the study —they were told months later, or not at all, that the shocks were fake and the learner wasn’t harmed. Milgram’s studies could not be perfectly recreated today, because researchers today are required to pay much more attention to the safety and well-being of human research subjects.
What was the purpose of the Milgram experiment?
The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure. Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor.
How did the electric shock experiment work?
If the learner responded incorrectly to a question, the teacher would be asked to administer an electric shock. The shocks started at a relatively mild level (15 volts) but increased in 15-volt increments up to 450 volts. (In actuality, the shocks were fake, but the participant was led to believe they were real.)
How many participants did Burger find obeyed?
Burger found that participants obeyed at similar levels as Milgram’s participants: 82.5% of Milgram’s participants gave the learner the 150-volt shock, and 70% of Burger’s participants did the same.
How many teachers were in the experiment room at once?
Another version of the study brought three "teachers" into the experiment room at once. One was a real participant, and the other two were actors hired by the research team. During the experiment, the two non-participant teachers would quit as the level of shocks began to increase. Milgram found that these conditions made the real participant far more likely to "disobey" the experimenter, too: only 10% of participants gave the 450-volt shock to the learner.
What was the most famous experiment of Stanley Milgram?
In the most well-known version of Stanley Milgram's experiment, the 40 male participants were told that the experiment focused on the relationship between punishment , learning, and memory. The experimenter then introduced each participant to a second individual, explaining that this second individual was participating ...
What is Milgram's interpretation of his research?
Milgram’s interpretation of his research was that everyday people are capable of carrying out unthinkable actions in certain circumstances. His research has been used to explain atrocities such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, though these applications are by no means widely accepted or agreed upon.
When did Milgram's experiment start?
The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:
What did Milgram investigate?
Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials.
Why did the experimenter wear a gray lab coat?
In the original baseline study – the experimenter wore a gray lab coat as a symbol of his authority (a kind of uniform). Milgram carried out a variation in which the experimenter was called away because of a phone call right at the start of the procedure.
Why did Milgram investigate the Germans?
Milgram (1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II. Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.
What is the agency theory of Milgram?
Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people have two states of behavior when they are in a social situation: The autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those actions.
Who was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person?
Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.
Who was the scientist who studied obedience?
The Milgram Shock Experiment. One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.
What Was The Milgram Experiment?
Factors That Influence Obedience
- Why did so many of the participants in this experiment perform a seemingly brutal act when instructed by an authority figure? According to Milgram, there are some situational factors that can explain such high levels of obedience: 1. The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance. 2. The fact that Yale (a trusted and authoritative academic i…
Ethical Concerns in The Milgram Experiment
- Milgram's experiments have long been the source of considerable criticism and controversy. From the get-go, the ethics of his experiments were highly dubious. Participants were subjected to significant psychological and emotional distress. Some of the major ethical issues in the experiment were related to: 1. The use of deception 2. The lack of pro...
Replications of The Milgram Experiment
- While Milgram’s research raised seriousethical questions about the use of human subjects in psychology experiments, his results have also been consistently replicated in further experiments. One review further research on obedience and found that Milgram’s findings hold true in other experiments.7 In 2009, researchers conducted a study designed to replicate Milgram's classic o…
Recent Criticisms and New Findings
- Psychologist Gina Perry suggests that much of what we think we know about Milgram's famous experiments is only part of the story. While researching an article on the topic, she stumbled across hundreds of audiotapes found in Yale archives that documented numerous variations of Milgram's shock experiments.
Impact of The Milgram Experiment
- Since there is no way to truly replicate the experiment due to its serious ethical and moral problems, determining whether Milgram's experiment really tells us anything about the power of obedience is impossible to determine. So why does Milgram's experiment maintain such a powerful hold on our imaginations, even decades after the fact? Perry believes that despite all it…
A Word from Verywell
- Milgram’s experiment has become a classic in psychology, demonstrating the dangers of obedience. The research suggests that situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining whether people will obey an authority figure. However, other psychologists argue that both external and internal factors heavily influence obedience, such as personal belie…