September 21, 2017

The Milgram Experiment September 21, 2017

Questions on, "Obedience to Authority" The Experiment by Stanley Milgram 1. Yale University ; in July 1961 2. This experiment was inspired after the Holocaust people justified acts of genocide by saying they were "following orders"

3. Was this experimental design, Blind, Double Blind, or Neither? It was blind because the subjects didn't really know who was getting the treatment. They thought it was the "learners" but actually it was them.

4. What was the explanatory variable? Authority; the experimentor telling the teachers the is was "essential they continue with the experiment"

5. What was the response variable? How far the teachers were willing to go with administering the shocks.

6. What was the treatment? Experimenter telling the "teacher" to go on while the "learner" was apparently feeling pain from the shocks.

7. Who is the authority figure in this experiment? The experimenter who was the important looking man in the white coat. (it was "Stanley Milgram")

8. Who are the actors and who are the actual subjects? The subjects were actually the "teachers" and the "learners" were really just acting.

9. Before the experiments were conducted, Milgrim investigated predictions about the outcome from different classes of people; what did most people predict would happen in this experiment? They predicted that a very small percentage (about 2%) would induce the full shock voltage on the "learners"

10. Is the actual outcome similar to what most people predicted? No! It was disturbing to find that about 65% of the subjects induced the full voltage!

11. Why do you think the "teachers" were willing to administer the shocks despite their being clearly uncomfortable? They didn't feel the full responsibility since they were just obeying orders. To the "teachers" it was more like the experimenter was the one doing the shocks and not them.

12. Section 3-3 in your textbook is about "Ethics". Why do you think it was this experiment by Milgram that raised questions about the ethics of scientific experimental design? There's a lot that can be said here, but for one, the "teachers" had to of suffered a tremendous amount of emotional trauma. How would you feel if you were one of the subjects and you had to live with yourself knowing that you were willing to inflict such pain on innocent people?

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