Critical Thinking Paper on "Behavioral Study of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram

Critical Thinking Paper on "Behavioral Study of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram

Introduction

Milgram's study of "Behavioral Study of Obedience” was inspired by the trial of a Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann and his persistence in claiming that he was only following the orders in the Holocaust incidence (Milgram, 1974). He became interested in the violent actions of the German officers and soldiers who sadistically murdered thousands of people because of "orders." These were normal men who carried on these brutal acts against fellow humans claimed that they upon occasion had found their "duty" repulsive, however, they had no other choice to their "orders." Milgram wanted to investgate whether people will commit atrocious acts because someone in power or authority over them has "ordered" them to and that whether their individualistic personalities had nothing or very little to do with their actions, in other words, he wanted to find out if situations made people act in an "evil" way and not their personalities or nature (Benjamin et al, 2009).

Discussion

Milgram recruited people for his experiment who were from different walks of life. Participants were lied to and told that they will be examined for the effects of punishment on their learning ability. A token sum of money was offered to them for their involvement (Benjamin et al, 2009). Participants also had the opportunity to play the role of a student or a teacher, despite the fact all the respondents eventually became the teacher. The learner was a performer operating as a cohort of the person carrying out the experiment.

Within Milgram's operational defination of defiance, a defiant subject was someone who halted the experiment at a point before the thirtieth shock level and an obedient subject was someone who accepted all the commands and administered all the shock levels (Milgram, 1974). However, towards the end of the experiment, Milgram expressly told all the subjects the actual reason behind the experiment in an effort to dispel any resulting anxiety (Benjamin et al, 2009).

Surprisingly, 26 out of the original 40 participants which makes it almost sixty five percent, managed the full shock levels and no one stopped before 300 volts (Milgram, 1974). Many other studies to date have managed to imitate Milgram's experiment, and have found that indeed more than sixty percent of the participants are are willing to give a fatal shock, and moreover, in Milgram's study, all the individuals who stopped early did not bother asking about the learner at all (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram's Study and Zimbardo's Research Experiment

When it comes to obedience, in 1971, a set of researchers at Stanford University, headed by Philip Zimbardo in his own prison system to search for an explanation of the conflict, and the U.S. Marine Corps conducted a study funded by the U.S. Navy (Carnahan et al, 2007). Zimbardo and his team often mistreated in prisons guards and other inmates have sought to test the hypothesis. Participants were recruited through newspaper advertisements and offered compensation of $ 15 per ...