Question

Describe Milgram’s obedience study and its takeaways.

Answer 1

Stanley Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience:

Stanley Milgram was a Yale University psychologist. He did an experiment to find out the relation between authority and obedience.He took 40 members to do this experiment. He used 450 volts voltage generator with 30 volts initial level and 15 volts increasing level by one step.This was a deceptive experiment. Participants in this experiment don’t know the actual goal of the experiment.

Actual Goal: To find out the relation between authority and obedience

Deceptive goal ( told to participants) : Increased memory power with punishment

Experiment:

Setting:

• Three participants will participate in this experiment for each time
• Those are experimenter ( authority figure) , Teacher ( obedient person) and learner.
• Teacher should listen experimenter words while doing experiment
• Learner should learn list of questions and he should answer the questions when teacher asked
• Learner will be placed in a room
• Experimenter and teacher will be placed in another room with voltage generator. Wires will be connected from generator to learner.

Process:

• If learner gave the correct answer then teacher asks another question .
• If learner gave the wrong answer then teacher will give punishment by applying voltage.
• Teacher increases 15 volts for each mistake.
• In this way experiment will be continued till 450 volts.
• 26 out of 40 teachers delivered 450 volts to the students
• 14 out of 40 teachers delivered 300 volts to the students.

After this experiment Stanly Milgram concluded that Authority and obedience relation ship is very dangerous relations ship.

Takeaways :

• People will work against their conscience if authority figure ordered them.
• We should not follow our authority figure blindly.