The Milgram Experiment of The 1960s Essay - 1229 Words

The Milgram experiment of the 1960s was designed to ascertain why so many Germans decided to support the Nazi cause. It sought to determine if people would be willing to contradict their conscience if they were commanded to do so by someone in authority. This was done with a psychologist commanding a teacher to administer an electric shock to a student each time a question was answered incorrectly. The results of the Milgram experiment help to explain why so many men in Nazi Germany were recruited to support the Nazi cause and serve as a warning against the use of â€Å"enhanced interrogation† techniques by the United States government. The Milgram experiment was designed and performed by Yale University social psychologist Stanley Milgram in†¦show more content†¦Milgram’s experiment sought to determine if a person would be obedient to an authoritative figure if the latter demanded that physical pain be inflicted upon another person as punishment. Milgramâ€⠄¢s experiment consisted of three people: a teacher, a student, and an authoritative figure, or â€Å"experimenter.† Each person who volunteered for the experiment was given the role of the teacher. The teacher was instructed to punish the student by inflicting an increasingly stronger electric shock every time the student answered a question incorrectly. However, the teacher only believed that he or she was administering shocks. In reality, the student was not being harmed at all. This illusion was made complete by the student in the adjoining room banging on the wall and screaming, seemingly in pain. Once the administered shock reached the three hundred volt level, the student stopped responding, and the experimenter encouraged the teacher to continue increasing the shock level up to four hundred fifty volts. If the person acting as the teacher wished to stop the experiment, he or she was repeatedly prompted by the experimenter to continue (Cherry). Of the forty people invo lved in the experiment, sixty-five percent of them delivered the maximum shock, despite the fact that they thought they were causing intense pain to the student. Additionally, although the participants seemed to experience growing agitation and stress as a result ofShow MoreRelatedStanley Milgram s Theory Of Group Conformity, The Power Of Peer Pressure1333 Words   |  6 PagesStanley Milgram was born in 1933 and was raised in New York. He graduated from James Monroe High School in 1950. Milgram then went on to earn his bachelor s degree from Queens College in 1954. His profound love of city life which was reflected in his 1970 article for Science on The Experience of City Living. Milgram later went on and furthered his studies at Harvard where he earned his Ph.D. Milgram was interested in social issues when it came to sociology. Milgram spent 1959-1960 at the InstituteRead MoreObedience Is The Psychological Mechanism That Links Individual Action1065 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"Ob edience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose.† (Milgram, 1963). As a Psychologist at Yale University, Milgram proposed an experiment mainly focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. In the 1960’s, Stanley Milgram analyzed justifications for genocide acts by those accused during World War II. The Nuremberg War Criminal trials, States the people were thought of them as simply following orders from their higher ranksRead MoreThe Psychological Health Of Human And Obedience991 Words   |  4 PagesSince the 1960s unethical experiments have been conducted to understand the mechanisms behind these phenomena. Recent studies explore the necessity of those unsafe practices to arouse new ideas in the psychological literature. 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