Each time the learner is wrong the shock will get stronger. In reality, the learner receives no shock because he is just pretending to be in pain so the teachers will stop. In most cases the teachers continues to increase the voltage up to 450 volts to the learner even though the learner refuses the answer the question. Milgram's experiment was set up to determine how people in a psychology laboratory would react to authority. Since more than half of the subjects in the first experiment administered the shock to the end,
In the first execution of the experiment Milgram randomly selected Yale students to use for the experiment. Many of the students did shock the learner and obeyed. Milgram’s partners were surprised at the data that the students shocked the learner. They soon concluded that Yale students were not the best subjects to use because the students are so competitive. The experiment was then executed again using randomly selected individuals in the area.
The “teacher” would receive orders from the “experimenter” to give an electric shock to the “learner” after every question they got incorrect and the “experimenter” would demand the “teacher” to up the voltage after every mistake. The “teacher” could either obey the orders given by the “experimenter”, or refuse to continue in the experiment. In conducting this test, it became evident that people had no trouble obeying a higher authority, particularly when told they would not be held responsible for the fate of the subject. Obedience tends to increase with the prestige of the authority figure. Since the study was done by an undergraduate research assistant posing as a Yale professor, the participants were definitely more willing to comply with the orders they were given because they felt more obligated to impress and seek recognition
* For every incorrect answer the experimenter would order the ‘teacher’ to administer a shock increasing with every wrong answer. Even though the ‘learner’ complained of pain and demanded to be released the experimenter would insist the ‘teacher’ continue. * The learner was not being shocked, and his voice only a recording. * Results: Before his study Milgram asked a group of students to predict the result, he also introduced
In “The Perils of Obedience”, Milgram was trying to prove a point that shows how far someone will go to be obedient to the authority. He began this experiment using three subjects: the experimenter, the teacher, and the learner, but only the teacher was clueless about what they were about to partake in. The teacher would read out a series of words, and the learner, who was strapped to an electric chair, was required to remember the words that were associated to each other (Milgram 215). When asked, if the learner gave the wrong answer, the teacher was required to give them an electric shock of “fifteen to four hundred fifty volts” (215). Although the teacher did not know it, the learner was actually an actor pretending to be in extreme pain when given the electrical shock to persuade the teacher to want to discontinue the experiment (215).
Unlike them, I was the only one that stuck it through. Then that one fateful day, we all got assignments telling us cuts were being made and that these tests are being administered to make these cuts. The test was given out, and for myself, I thought I did quite decent, but the teacher did not think the same of my performance. We had an argument about the ordeal; she even said “You did better than some of the others, but you weren’t the best.” I exclaimed, “I was better than some?! Most of them didn’t even finish!” She stated, “It’s up to me to decide who stays and goes.” Long story short, I was removed for the program.
Although it was acting, the experience still felt real. When the young men were interviewed, they talked about how the experiment changed their behavior and attitudes. Zimbardo felt that there were no long-term effects on the students However, there were a few. One of the prisoners replied that he has a problem with people with mirror glasses because, the glasses were apart of the experiment. The experiment ended when a graduate student who became Zimbardo’s wife came to visualize the experiment.
As the experiment going around, learner did some errors. The teacher administered a shock to the learner, with the voltage started from 15-volt, and increased for each wrong answer. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. Learner moans which were played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.
Of these subjects, 75% of them changed their answers to the majority vote at least once. When under the influence of peer pressure, the subjects accepted the majority and conformed 36.8% of the time. 25% of the individuals who partook in the experiment did not conform at all. Many variables within the experiment made the conformity rate fluctuate. These variables among others were unanimity, and when faced with an opposition of only 2, minority subjects “accepted the wrong answer 13.6 per cent of the time.
His work is considered fundamentally important and helps to understand how unremarkable people can do works of sickening cruelty. Milgram and obedience In his most noted experiment the volunteers thought that they 'take part in a study on memory' (Banyard, 2012, p. 67). The participants were called 'teacher' in this experiment. The 'teachers' were told by a fake scientist to administer electric shocks to a 'learner', who was sitting in another room, if the 'learner' forgets certain words he learned before. For every incorrect answer the 'teacher' had to increase the level of shock.