According to Milgram
1. According to Milgram, some form of authority is always needed in a communal environment, and those that are not forced to respond are the people who are in isolation, or people without communities. People who belong in this authority still has a choice to whether obey or defy that said authority. 2. The dilemma inherent in obedience to authority is argued upon by humaninsts – people who value individual decisions, and the conservative philosophers – people who believe that disobedience is the factor that threatens societal relations. 3.
The obedience experiments conducted involved an proctor for the experiment, a actor disguised as a “student” and a “teacher”, the main theme of the subject is whether or not the “teacher” will follow authority, or act on his/her own free will. The experiment is conducted in the manner wherein the teacher will be asking the student to memorize 45 pairs of words, such that the student should remember the second word immediately after the first word is shown. Every time an error is committed, the “teacher” is instructed to shock the “student” thru the flipping of levers in a machine that is said to be hooked to the “student”.
The voltage increases with each mistake, starting at a low of 15 volts to a high of 450 volts. To make the experiment much more believable, each “teacher” is shocked with a 45-volt dose so as to make it seem that there really is a voltage for each lever. Reactions of the “student” also help the credibility of the experiment, at 75 volts, he grunts, at 120 volts he loudly complains, at 150 volts, he demands that the experiment be stopped. With each increase in voltage, the complaints turn into agonizing screams until a point – 285 volts, wherein the “student” stops any kind of movement.
Take note that the student and the proctor are part of the experiment and the student, played by an actor, does not really feel any pain. 4. Psychiatrists, specifically, predicted that most will not go beyond 150 volts, wherein the first signs of discomfort on the part of the student is exhibited, they also claim that only 4% will reach 300 volts, and about 0. 1% will go all out until the very end, the experiment results proved these predictions wrong. In the tests, 25 out of the 40 subjects went all out, stopping only after the third blast of 450 volts; and this is after the proctor told them to stop.
5. Milgram affirms the assumption that people, whether or not one is a student of a well-known university, or a white collar worker, is aggressive, especially after the tests were conducted in two different groups: Yale students and “ordinary people”. The tests still offered the same result; people still obeyed authority whether they are deemed “ordinary” or aggressive. In the sadistic, lunatic point of view, it would seem that Milgram stressed the idea that people just try to enjoy things that they cannot go against, as shown within the response of Mr.
Braveman. It was not really sadism, but rather submission that forced them to do what they did. 6. The findings brought Hannah Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil closer to the truth – that people who did seemingly “evil” things believed that their actions were normal, whether out of obligation or duty. 7. According to Milgram, the essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions
8. The “teachers” justified there actions by saying that they are only intermediate links in a chain of action, excusing themselves by saying that the responsibility rests within the proctor, excusing themselves of any kind of responsibility, therefore continuing with the experiment until the end. 9. Milgram discusses the fragmentation of the total human act as a situation wherein no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. The person does not get to see the whole situation.
He obeys authority, ultimately clouding his judgement about the degree of his own actions. He “just follows orders”. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist born August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984, conducted the Milgram experiment on the obedience of people to authority. He also was famous for the concept of familiar strangers, but for the sake of this essay, we will focus on the Milgram experiment. Milgram defined obedience as some form of authority always needed in a communal environment.
He conducted an experiment to test this theory. The obedience experiments conducted involved an proctor for the experiment, a actor disguised as a “student” and a “teacher”, the main theme of the subject is whether or not the “teacher” will follow authority, or act on his/her own free will. The experiment is conducted in the manner wherein the teacher will be asking the student to memorize 45 pairs of words, such that the student should remember the second word immediately after the first word is shown.
Every time an error is committed, the “teacher” is instructed to shock the “student” thru the flipping of levers in a machine that is said to be hooked to the “student”. The voltage increases with each mistake, starting at a low of 15 volts to a high of 450 volts. To make the experiment much more believable, each “teacher” is shocked with a 45-volt dose so as to make it seem that there really is a voltage for each lever. Take note that the student and the proctor are part of the experiment and the student, played by an actor, does not really feel any pain.
According to psychiatrists, the experiment will show that people will not hurt another person even if told to do so, but findings show otherwise. In the tests, 25 out of the 40 subjects went all out, stopping only after the third blast of 450 volts; and this is after the proctor told them to stop. In his work, Milgram expressed his views in two important assumptions: that people are, in nature, aggressive and the sadistic lunatic point of view.
His view on the sadistic nature is similar to Hannah Arendt’s view on the “banality of evil” – that the people who did seemingly “evil” things believed that their actions were normal, whether out of obligation or duty. Milgram also talks about the essence of obedience, according to him, the essence of obedience is when a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. He also talks about being intermediate links to in a chain.
People who see themselves as links to a chain always excuse themselves for their actions by pointing out that they are not in the top of the chain, and therefore not 100% responsible. Finally, Milgram discusses the fragmentation of the total human act as a situation wherein no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. He “just follows orders”. Works Cited Milgram, Stanley. “The Pilgrims of Obedience. ” Harper’s Magazine, December, 1973. “Milgram Basics”. StanleyMilgram. com. 2008. 24 March, 2009 < http://www. stanleymilgram. com/milgram. php>.
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