Variation Of Stanley Milgram's Original Experiment example essay topic

In this article "The Pearls of Obedience", Stanley Milgram asserts that obedience to authority is a common response for many people in today's society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals. Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a person's tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts. The learner is actually an actor who is strapped to a harmless electric chair.

He is told several pairs of words, and must remember and repeat these pairings with the make-believe fear of being electrocuted for incorrect answers. The foretold outcome or this experiment was expressed by several people who are familiar with behavioral sciences. They predicted that the majority of subjects would not pass 150 volts, and that a few crazed lunatics would reach the maximum voltage. This conclusion was disproved from Milgram's experiment.

The majority of the subjects obeyed the experimenter to the end. There were several reactions to the experiment. Some people showed signs of tension or stress, others laughed, and some showed no signs of discomfort throughout the experiment. Subjects often felt satisfaction by obeying the experimenter. This gives proof to the belief that many people obey authority to show they are doing a good job, and perceived as loyal by the experimenter or society, which ever the case may be. One theory used to explain this experiment, is one of hidden aggression.

According to this concept, people suppress aggressive behavior, and the experiment allows them to express this anger. Therefore when an individual is placed in a situation where he has control over another individual, whom he is able to punish repeatedly, all demented and hidden anger will be revealed. This theory is put in question, when a variation of Stanley Milgram's original experiment is described. This experiment enables the subject, not the experimenter, to choose the level of shock for incorrect answers. The results confirm that the majority of subjects did not pass the first loud protest. Stanley Milgram believes the most basic lesson of this experiment is that common people with no particular aggression, will carryout their jobs and become instruments of an evil operation.

Most importantly, very few people have the constitution to express their beliefs, even when ruinous effects of their behavior is apparent. This was explained in the experiment when many teachers showed signs of discomfort while carrying out the experimenters orders. The subjects were afraid to show defiance or arrogance toward the experimenter. The order of modern society is much to blame for the problem of obedience. Society has bee segregated into people performing specific jobs that erase an individuals quality of life and work. To illustrate this segregation, Stanley Milgram modified the basic experiment so that there would be an additional person.

The subject was responsible for asking the questions, and the additional person was used to carry out the electrocution. A majority of the subjects completed the experiment and found the, not themselves responsible for the pain inflicted on the learner. This experiment helps reveal that in today's world an individual is blind to the entire scheme but only a small portion, and is consequently incapable to perform for the overall good. Because of this segregation, no one is confronted with the effect of destructive acts. This is a disastrous flaw in the structure of modern society, resulting in organized evil.