Stanley Milgram’s Behavioral Study of Obedience Essay

â€Å"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....† ― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good â€Å"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.† ― Henry David Thoreau In the early 1960’s Stanley Milgram (1963) performed an experiment titled Behavioral Study of Obedience to measure compliance levels of test subjects prompted to administer punishment to learners. The experiment had surprising results. Purpose of the research. Stanley Milgram’s (1963), Behavioral Study of Obedience measured how far an ordinary subject will go beyond their fundamental moral character to comply with direction from†¦show more content†¦The subjects were informed that the punishment would not cause permanent tissue damage, however, could be extremely painful. The subjects observed the learner/accomplice being prepared with electrodes strapped in a chair. The teacher/subjects read a series of word-pairs to the learner then read the first word of the pair along with four terms. The learner’s role was to pair the first word with the correct term (Milgram, 1963). The learner would then press one of four switches attached to an electrical shock generator indicating his response. Unknown to the teacher, â€Å"in all conditions the learner gives a predetermined set of responses to the word pair test, based on the schedule of approximately three wrong answers to one correct answer† (Milgram, 1963). To authenticate the potential electrical intensity to the learner the teacher is sampled with a 45-volt shock to the wrist. The teacher is then instructed to administer an incrementally increasing punishing electrical shock for each incorrect answer. This follows several methods to inform the teacher of the potential impact of the electrical shock that they will administer. These included, warnings listing the voltage range of 15 to 450-volts labeled Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock, Danger Severe Shock, and XXX, bright redShow MoreRelatedCritique of Stanley Milgram’s â€Å"Behavioral Study of Obedience†905 Words   |  4 PagesA Critique of Stanley Milgram’s â€Å"Behavioral Study of Obedience† Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote â€Å"Behavioral Study of Obedience†, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. InRead MoreAnalysis Of Stanley Milgram s Perils Of Obedience Essay1709 Words   |  7 PagesStill, many questions still remain prevalent as to how an individual reaches his or her decision on obedience in a distressing environment. Inspired by Nazi trials, Stanley Milgram, an American psychologist, questions the social norm in â€Å"Perils of Obedience† (1964), where he conducted a study to test how far the average American was willing to for under the pressures of an authority figure. Milgram s study showed that under the orders of an a uthoritative figure, 64% of average Americans had the capabilityRead MoreEssay on The Controversial Issues of Obedience1136 Words   |  5 PagesIndividuals think differently when it comes to obedience. One might think of how we train dogs to be obedient, another might relate obedience to punishing a child for breaking a rule, or even others think about Hitlers Regime in Germany. When it comes to obedience, there are several sides. 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