Stanley Milgram

Who is Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram was born on August 15, 1933. Milgram was the second child of three children
in a working class Jewish family who all lived in the Bronx New York. Stanley Milgram was an
exceptional student who was enrolled at the Queens College where he studied political science,
literature, art etc. In his third year about 1953 Milgram went on a tour to Europe where he
became increasingly engaged in global affairs. He was so fascinated that he was accepted at the
Columbia University to further pursue a degree in this program. Stanley Milgram was a man of
many options as it relates to education wise, he was so brilliant in his studies that he was also
given the opportunity to part take in studies at Harvard University in the social relation
department. While at Harvard Milgram took classes with some of the most iconic psychologists
including Mr. Gordon Allport, Mr. Solomon Asch, and Mr. Jerome Bruner these were some of
the leading psychologists, people who Milgram was inspired by some of which played a vital
role in the directions of his academic career. Mr.Solomon Asch had an experiment “the
conformity experiment” where he studied how individual’s behavior and the choices they make
can be influenced by group behavior.

This experiment captured the attention of Milgram; he even applied this experiment with a few
modifications on groups seeking to explore national stereotypes. He was mostly focused on the
US and Norway and then expanded to include France, traveling to Oslo and Paris to start study
groups utilizing his connections at Harvard. One of the methods he used to demonstrate his
experiment was, participants were asked to determine between the lengths of two tones while in
closed booths as part of an auditory task he used to gauge compliance. But there was a bit of a
twist to this experiment because in the other booth participants could hear other members
responses, however it was just a recording in an empty room. This was what he used to test how
well they would make decisions on their own or answer based of the responses that they were
hearing from the other booth. This was how brilliant Stanley Milgram was his findings resulted
in France being the least compliance and America and Norway showed a little bit more
compliance with their answers.

Following the completion of his doctoral studies at Harvard, Milgram obtained a position as an
assistant professor at Yale University in 1960. He then majored his studies on obedience. Due to
the Jewish heritage and tragedies from his youthful days that has been suffered by Jews in
Europe, Stanley Milgram was eager to comprehend the causes of individuals's acts of damage
towards other people. This was when he came up with the idea to design an unprecedented
experiment known as the Milgram Experiment.
Obedience Experiment

So what is this study all about you may eagerly ask, well milgram had some participants or as he
would refer to them as his “test subjects” who volunteered in his experiment. So these
participants believed that this experience would have been a learning experience whereas they
would have learnt about the processes of punishment and how the memory works. These
defenseless victims where painfully shock by the experimenter with an actual-looking shock
generator with 30 voltage levels, ranging from 15 to 450 volts, was used to replicate the shocks.
The experimenter gave the subjects instructions to shock the learner whenever the latter provided
an incorrect response to a question. So directives were given to increase the shock intensity for
every incorrect response. From the room you could hear some of these victims either banging on
the wall or crying in agony pleading the experimenters to stop or they either come up with
excuses to end the experiment at predetermined voltage levels. Based on investigations it would
seemed that Milgrams victims were mostly male if not all were males. However the findings of
this experiment resulted in 70% tolerating the procedure from start to end at 450 volts.

Results also showed that obedience was higher when the learner was in a different room from the
subject than when they were close to each other (e.g., in the same room or near enough to touch).
Despite verbally expressing their dislike of continuing with the shocks, subjects continued to
obey.

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Importance of this study & how it contributed to society

Based on researches it is said that because of Milgram's work, the American Psychological
Association set guidelines for working with human subjects, and Institutional Review Boards
were created. Milgram was able to show that our preconceived notions about who we are and
how we behave in social situations may not always be accurate. In essence, Milgram was able to
shed light on a branch of psychology that, despite what some people may think, gives crucial
insights into human behavior. As it relates to contribution to the society, because of Milgrams
obedience experiment and its ethical issues, in today’s world it changes how experiments can be
performed. His study even proved that people even in our era will obey commands once these
commands are from someone of authority.

What went wrong in his experiments (Ethical Breaches)

First and foremost Milgram did not fully disclose the details of the tests to his subjects during the
debriefing, leading some of them to believe that they had actually shocked someone else. The
subjects did not discover the true nature of the trials until several months had passed. Reports
alleging that some participants suspected they were the subjects being investigated, with the goal
of the study is to determine how far they would obey the experimenter. Here is the shocking truth
of this experiment; the element of deceit was one of this experiment's main problems. The
electric shock was fake, although the participants were unaware of it. Many of them were visibly
upset, stuttering, sweating, weeping, and some of them even experienced seizures as a result of
the stress. After the experiment, Milgram gave the subjects a debriefing and revealed that nobody
had been hurt. Some others wonder if subjecting the person to that experience at all is acceptable,
despite the fact that it did help to lessen their distress. (This was how brilliant he was he played a
mind game on each subjects).

He even went as far as to not disclose the participant’s rights so most of them went in the
experiment not knowing that they had the right to withdraw it was as if they had no other option
but to continue in the experiment. Well a few withdrew without thinking of the consequences,
they walked out regardless. Funny enough Stanley Milgram did not pick his participants all he
did was to post an ad in the newspaper, they actually volunteered.

Critics on this experiment

Over the years this experiment has been widely criticized on ethical grounds. Based on what was
presented you probably think this man is really a brilliant crazy man (if that is even a term) but
look at how innocently he manipulated these people and how he mislead them smartly. Even
though again in his defense was only to test how humans conformed to someone of authority and
make decisions on their own, but wasn’t there any other approach or way to bring out this
experiment? What are your thoughts? Because I think there must have been another way to
conduct this research. Even though history has it that great things came out of this experiment
despite the ethical breaches. Just imagine experiencing a mind blowing experiment, one that
missed up your mental health thinking that all of this was actually real only to find out this was
only a mind game all fake. I tell you Stanley Milgram was one brilliant man.

Solution /Conclusion

So was there a solution for this chaotic experiment? You may ask well base on investigation I
would say no because in Stanley Milgrams defense he was only testing how well humans react or
obey to orders given from someone with authority. In addition to that how well humans make
decisions under pressure. Even though his research had a few hiccups, but shocking news is that
we actually have researchers out there who is actually replicating Milgrams Experiment with
added safe modifications to it. So it’s safe to say Stanley Milgram sets a trend or a path in which
other physiologist could follow as well as to bring awareness on how people make decisions or
how conformed they are.