Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority
What was the Milgram study investigating?
He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II , Nuremberg War Criminal trials.
What was the Milgram experiment trying to prove?
The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure . Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual.
What was the point of the Milgram experiment?
The Original Experiment
In Milgram's original experiment, participants took part in what they thought was a “learning task.” This task was designed to investigate how punishment —in this case in the form of electric shocks—affected learning.
What did Milgram's experiment reveal about human behavior?
Milgram's research has had profound implications for the study of individual behavior that results in harm to others, demonstrated by events like the Holocaust and the My Lai massacre, showing that obedience to authority figures stems from the construction of a situation or context of authority, within which various ...
What is a major problem with the original Milgram study?
what is a major problem with the original Milgram study? Milgram lied to his respondents, making his study borderline unethical . The field of social psychology studies topics at the intrapersonal level.
What did Milgram conclude?
Social psychologist Stanley Milgram researched the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative– even when acting against their own better judgment and desires.
What was unethical about the Milgram experiment?
The experiment was deemed unethical, because the participants were led to believe that they were administering shocks to real people . The participants were unaware that the learner was an associate of Milgram's. However, Milgram argued that deception was necessary to produce the desired outcomes of the experiment.
What ethical guidelines did Milgram break?
Milgram's study has been heavily criticised for breaking numerous ethical guidelines, including: deception, right to withdraw and protection from harm .
How does the presence of observers affect a person's performance?
How does the presence of observers affect a person's performance? It improves performance on easy tasks and hinders a person's performance on difficult tasks .
What was the most serious charge leveled against the Milgram experiment?
Milgram's work with his subjects came in for criticism from others in the psychology community almost as soon as it was published. One of the more serious charges leveled against Milgram's paper was the original sin of social science research: sample bias .
Which type of persuasion involves encouraging people to agree?
Using the foot-in-the-door technique, the persuader gets a person to agree to bestow a small favor or to buy a small item, only to later request a larger favor or purchase of a bigger item.
What was the primary conclusion of Stanley Milgram's obedience research?
Stanley Milgram reached the conclusion that people would obey instructions from those who they saw as legitimate authority figures , even if the instructions they received were to do something to harm another person. From this, Milgram concluded that people were socialized to follow immoral or unlawful orders.
Why was Zimbardo's experiment unethical?
Ethical Issues
The study has received many ethical criticisms, including lack of fully informed consent by participants as Zimbardo himself did not know what would happen in the experiment (it was unpredictable). Also, the prisoners did not consent to being ‘arrested' at home.
What is the group polarization effect?
Group polarization is defined as a phenomenon when “ members of a deliberating group move toward a more extreme point in whatever direction is indicted by the members' predeliberation tendency .” Group polarization leads to changing attitudes among individuals within the group.
When a salesperson visits your home and asks you to try?
When a salesperson visits your home and asks you to try a free sample of a cleaning fluid , you agree. When he returns the following week and asks you to purchase an assortment of expensive cleaning products, you make the purchase. The salesperson appears to have made effective use of: the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.
