Milgram Experiment Essay

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1. Group pressure and conformity is where individuals in a group with one or more individual pressures another individual to believe what the rest of the group is saying instead of going with what you as an individual believes in. (Boss, 2010 Pg 121) When evaluating the Milgram Experiment, normal everyday Americans kept delivering lethal doses of electrical shocks because the researcher told them to do so regardless of how strong the shocks were getting. Evaluating this experiment from a perspective of group pressure and conformity, the subject kept delivering the shocks due to the pressure from the researcher even if they did not believe what was happening was ethical. This affected the results of the experiment because it shows that we go along with group or an authority figure when we are being pressured instead of standing up for what we as individuals think is right from our individual point of view. An example that would support my evaluation based upon group pressure and conformity would be when US soldiers took Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003. These soldiers took these prisoners and abused and humiliated them. These soldiers abused and humiliated these prisoners because they we told by a higher command to do so. These soldiers feared if they didn’t do what they were told they would face consequences. (Boss, 2010. Pg 17) 2. Diffusion of responsibility is when we are in a large group and there is a problem and the problem was not exactly assigned to us to deal with so therefore it becomes someone else’s problem to deal with (Boss, 2010. Pg 122). When evaluating the Milgram Experiment from the perspective of diffusion of responsibility all the test subjects kept going with the experiment for the fact that is something happened to the person who was getting “shocked” they wouldn’t be blamed for it. If you notice it experiment the

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