The Milgram Experiment of Obedience :: essays research papers

Milgrams try out of obedience was do in 1961 soon after WW2 and the trials for war crimes against the Nazis were being done. An ad was placed in the newspaper for a Memory and schooling Experiment at $4.50 an hour, but the try was ultimately on Obedience. The experiment was conducted on behalf of Adolph Eichmann who was convicted of war crimes, and crimes against humanity, but he was only following orders. Eichmann change out death warrants but never carried out the killings. The objective of the experiment was to find out if people would obey higher authority scour though what they were doing was morally wrong. There would be the experimenter who recorded the teachers reactions and answered questions of the teacher. The learner, an actor not actually harmed, was supposedly outrageed every clock he had given a wrong answer and each m he was wrong he would be shocked with more voltage than the one before. The teacher administered questions to the learner along with the shoc ks for the wrong answer. What the teacher estimate he was doing was giving a painful shock, not deadly shock to the learner to test of punishment leads to better memory.During the experiment very some actually went against authority, even though all shocked the learner at 300W and on. Over 50% went to the full amount of electricity. In fact a prediction from other psychologist suggested that not even 1% of the subjects would follow up to the last switch on the generator. During the experiment, teachers, the actual subjects, became nervous. The teachers began questioning the experimenter, who told them to go on and that he was the one talking all the responsibility of the teachers actions. This persuaded many teachers to go on feeling obligated to follow authority even though the teachers knew they were doing something morally wrong. The teachers fidgeted a lot, moved the hands, pulled out cigarettes and looking around, talking fast, and so forth which are all signs of nervousness. Despite their nervousness and morality they listened to authority to wait long after the learner was not responding.