Perils of Obedience Summary In Stanley Milgram’s Perils of Obedience, he explores how people react to authority, even when they are told to do something that they found immoral. He conducted multiple versions of his experiment, trying out different situations doing the same tasks. His first trial he started with his students, taking them in pairs of two. They were both given roles, the learner, and the teacher. The teacher was told that the object of the experiment was to study the effects of punishment on learning.
The experimenter explained that the learner would be asked a series of questions and if he answers incorrectly, the teacher will administer an electric shock. Gretchen Brandt is the first of several subjects to undergo the experiment, and her reaction the learner’s pain was similar to what was predicted before the study began. She remained calm, composed, and was firm in her decision to disobey the experimenters orders. According to Milgram, this was the reaction he expected from almost all the participants. He collected predictions about the outcome of the experiments from a diverse group of people and most predicted that the subjects would not be obedient, but they were wrong.
Stanley Milgram designed an experiment that would test the effect that obedience has on an individuals, when they are confronted with a moral dilemma. Three people were part of the experiment. The experimenter represents an authority figure, the learner an individual taking part in a memory experiment, and the true subject of the experiment is called the teacher. The teacher is required to read word groups to the learner. If the learner is unable to repeat the word groups back to the teacher correctly the teacher is required to shock the learner.
By showing to the readers that he was once a public school teacher it helps them see him as an expert giving his own expert opinion. He stresses that the public school system is doing the youth of this generation an injustice. He does this through analyzing the goals of education, not schooling. He uses the third goal a lot which is to make each person their best that they can be. He also says the today’s school system suppresses the word genius.
Most teachers paused at 135 volts and then began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most learners banged on the walls after several high shocks, the subjects wanted to stop after hearing the screams of pain coming from the learner. Most subjects still continued after being told they were not to be held responsible if anything happens to the learner, and same subjects began to laugh nervously and exhibit extreme signs of stress. Milgram also explains “the ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation, an impression of his duties as a subject, and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies” (White, Billings. Pg.699).
Milgram put a twist on the experiment asking the age-old question of, “if the Germans during WWII were simply obeying to authority when carrying out the Holocaust or were they all acting on their own”. The test subject, or teacher, would administer electric shocks to the learner, a paid actor, when the learner incorrectly answered the word pairings. The teacher thought the learner was receiving electric shocks when in reality the learner was not receiving any shocks. An instructor, the authoritative figure, was sitting behind the teacher reassuring the teacher that the shocks may be painful but would not inflict permanent damage. Throughout the experiment, the teacher can be seen looking back towards the instructor for permission on whether to continue or stop .The teacher instructed the learner to continue even when the learner cried out in pain and begged for the experiment to stop.
He wanted to see the affect authority figures had on ordinary people. He also wanted to see just how far someone will go just to get rewarded, and what limits people will go to disobey. He set up his experiment using three people; the experimenter, the teacher, and the learner. The teacher and the learner could not see each other
Lots were apparently drawn, but it was arranged that in each case the volunteer would be the teacher. Teacher and learner were then taken to a room where the learner was strapped into a chair and electrodes fixed to his wrists. The volunteer/teacher was told that the punishment to be applied was electric shock, and that these shocks could be extremely painful, although they would cause no permanent damage. Next the volunteer/teacher was taken to his own room where he was given his instructions; every time the learner made a mistake, he was to give an increasingly high electric shock by way of punishment. The intensity of these shocks - as displayed on a 'shock generator' - ranged from 15V to 450V.
Patrick McAuley Satire Essay 1/22/13 Bully for the Best According to an article written by MSNBC contributor Linda Carrol, everyday across our country one out of every six school kids is affected by the terrible use of bullying. Bullying is the largest problem concerning the safety and well-being of children at school. Students complain that bullying problems have driven them to lose focus in their learning, causing grades to drop and self-confidence to deteriorate over time. Bullies seem to target the weaker students, both physically and mentally. All schools say “no” to bullying, but why not say “yes”.
I selected this target group because I everyone experience nervousness and anxiety during the first day of class or even a presentation. Introduction to the presentation: First, I will introduce myself to the class and my topic and explain to them why I selected my target group. I will also tell the class that at the end of my speech we will be playing an ice breaker game. I will also ask if anyone in the class , Who doesn’t know what an ice breaker is? Depending on their answers I will give them a small brief explanation to what an ice breaker is and what is it use for.