MILGRAM 'S Experiment ENG

Corrias Marco 5F
A.S. 2015/2016
Milgram's experiment and the autority's principle

In 1961 Stanley Milgram, a US social psychologist, realized an experiment
which puropse was to study the behavior of people when an autority ordered
them to execute some orders that were against their moral values. Milgram's
interest about this problem was also born because of the historical
circumstances bonded to Adolf Heichmann's process, chief of the jew
extermination during the second world war, which took place in Jerusalem
some weeks before the experiment. Heichmann justified his behavior by saying
that he just limited himself to execute orders whitout having any hate towards
Jews. With this experiment Milgram wanted to answer to a question: "Was it
possible that Heichmann and his accomplices were just executing orders?".
In other words Milgram's purpose was to study how the determination of an
individual behavior in a political/hierarchical/autoritharian system that imposed
obedience was done.
Description of the experiment
Fourty male subjects, of different ages and social-professional levels were
recruited whith an announce on a journal, that garanteed a reasonable pay to the
ones who would have been selected. The experiment wanted to study human's
memory and evaluation ability of the punishments inflicted to the other
experimental subjects, in order to study all this mental process.
The test
The experiment was done in some rooms of Yale's university and the
partecipants were informend in detail and in a very formal way about the
experiment's dynamics and his aims: all this was due to strenghten the
credibility and the authority of the scientist.
During the first step the roles of "student" and "teacher" were assigned with a
fake draw: the student was an accomplice and to the unaware subject was
always assigne the role of "teacher". The test consisted in a lecture of pairs of
words by the student, for example: duck / wild, blue/ box etc... Then the teacher
repeated the second word of the pair also with four new words, among which
the student had to choose the correct one that was paired with the other word.
For example "blue", "car, water, box, lamp".
The punishment
Whenever the answer would have been wrong, the teacher had to punish the
student with an electric shock of growing intensity, done by a series of 30
switches placed in a panel which was associated the electrical potential from 15
Volts to 450 Volts, and ordered in 4 groups with the following writings: "light
shock"," heavy shock", "DANGER very strong shock", "XXX (Death)".
Then to the unaware teacher was given the possibility to try the 45V shock.
Naturally, the accomplice made a mistake and the teacher was forced to inflict a
shock of growing intensity. The accomplice, bonded to a chair, simulated
growing pain: groans, laments, desperate screams, requests of help. At 270 V he
emitted a penetrating shriek and after the 300V he simulated a fainting and then
moved like he was dying.
The conflict
The teacher lived in a state of anxiety determined by the insurgent conflict
between his values and moral principles and the autority's orders that he
recognized as legit and that ordered him to continue the experiment despite the
negative conditions of the student.. the scientist's orders were like " the
experiments requires you to continue", "you have no other choice you have to
continue". The experiment was interrupted only if the subject refused to
execute the orders, and then the true aim of the research was revealed. The
subjects even physically reacted with : spasms, increased sweating, barbling,
protests, biting their lips, etc. But felt, in most of the tests, anyway in duty to
obey the autority.
Some variation of this experiments were done: they were basen on the
decreasing distance between the unaware subject and the student. For example;
the teacher cannot see the student, but can hear his laments; the teacher can hear
and see the student; the teacher cannot see or hear the student.; different number
of partecipants.
The results
The mean maximum shock that was inflicted during the experiment was of
360V and in the 62% of the tests the partecipants ended up to somministrate the
450V / deadly shock.
Explaination of Milgram's experiment
According to Milgram "It's the extreme propensity of abult people to follow
until the end the order of the autority that rapresents the main discovery of this
study".
But analysing this extreme propensity is very complex. First of all, the
education to the obedience is one of the main process of socialization. Society,
trough the various institutions (school, family, job...) shapes since the childhood
the individual to submit at the obedience rule of the legit autority, that
composes one of the fundamentals of the social life.
Second it verifies the phenomenon of redefinition of the situation that brings
to a perceptive distortion of the same (situantion), breaking the connection
with the norms which the subject is submitted. The situation developed with
the experiment brings in fact the subjects to insert the unhuman behavior that
they use with the victim in a contest that suits with their values and beliefs.
This way the violent action is seen as reasonable and objectively necessary.
Indeed the subject starts to feel the legit autority of the scientist which he
consider himself obliged, and justifies his punitive behavior toward the victim
as useful for the science, focalizing his perception on the orders imposed by the
scientist end putting in second layer the reactions of the victim. So in this
contests what seems to be unhuman, is considered as normal or reasonable, his
negative valence is canceled. We have also to consider the fact that the
experiment was done very quickly, and the subject didn't have the right time to
understand the rule that was imposed to him.
The subject passes in an Heteronomous state (opposed to autonomous): his
actions are guided by a second person which the subjects recognizes as the
authority and he feels that he has been inserted in a hierarchical structure, where
his position is submitted to the scientist.Therefore the heteronomous part of the
situation consists in the fact that our personal behavior is percieved as totally
manipulated by the reciever orders, and not made up by our will or
concience. "The subjects feels responsable to the autority's orders instead of the
actions thad he does".
CONCLUSIONS
Milgram's conclusion is that " normal people, that do their job without any
particular hate towards the victims, can become terrible parts of big destruction
process (Jew extermination for example): even when the effects are revealed in
all their severity, not much people had the necessary sources to resist to an
autority." (Milgram, 1974).
Even Miller underlines the power of the rule where you have to obey to a legit
autority as the explaination of the experiment: "the anxiety that the subjects
demonstrated during this experiment made clear the extraordinary impact of the
autority: a pair of subjects supposedly normal ("good people"), was induced to
go against his principles, going against the victim that was lamenting, only to
execute an order that was said by the autority". (Miller, 1986)
Milgram's experiment variations and critiques
Milgram's experiment is a classic for social psychology and the studies about
"autority and conformism", it was replicated countless times in different places
and countries, and has always obtained similiar results.
The critiques addressed to the experiment were of various types:
1) of ethical kind because of the potential damages dealt to the subjects and the
traumatic experrience that they have lived. 2) of metodological kind: the use of
deception toward the subject to convince him about the reality of the
experiment.
Milgram's experiment today
This experiment became so famous even because it was resumed in many
sectors. Peter gabriel wrote "We do what we're told" that is inspired to
Milgram's test. In 2001 Oliver Hirshbiegel made a movie inspired to the
experiment, called "the experiment". Lately the french journalist Cristophe Nick
realized a Tv program (called The game of Death) , where he proposed the
experiment's mechanic.

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Corrias Marco 5F

Milgram's experiment and the autority's principle

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