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Stanley Milgram's Experiment

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Stanley Milgram's Experiment
Stanley Milgram was an extremely famous psychologist who was best known for his groundbreaking experiment on the subject of obedience during the 1960s. Milgram began his career as a psychologist just around the time that the horrifying truth of the concentration camps came out. The fact that almost an entire nation obeyed one man, who commanded them to do inhumane and grotesque acts to other human beings intrigued Stanley Milgram. He became even more interested when he began watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who simply did not seem to be the appalling monster that many people expected and portrayed him to be. In fact, Milgram described Eichmann as being less of a “sadistic monster…[and] that he came closer to being an uninspired bureaucrat …show more content…
Respondents were being informed that the experiment would analyze how being punished could have an effect on learning aptitude. Three individuals would be involved in the experiment, one person who would be the “experimenter”, one person who would be the “teacher” and one person who would be the “learner.” The experimenter was in charge of the entire experiment, giving orders to the teacher when they were hesitant to perform their duties, and would continuously remind the teacher that they must continue the trial, even when they began to feel uncomfortable with their part in the experiment. The role of experimenter would be filled by someone who was completely aware of the experiment, and would try their best to keep the experiment going for as long as they could. The teacher was meant to listen and obey the rules of the experimenter and deliver unpleasant stimuli to the learner when ordered to by the experimenter. The learner was supposed to memorize word pairings and then answer questions about these word pairings to the best of …show more content…
While the test subject is in complete control over when the experiment can be stopped based on their own level of morals, it would not be considered proper to put the test subject in an environment like this that could be perceived as “hostile” without their complete knowledge of their part in the experiment. It would be impossible to inform the test subjects about the extremely stressful experiment they would be taking place in without informing them on exactly what they would be doing, and in this experiment, the discretion of the test was important to get clear and true results. Another immoral part of Milgram’s experiment was the severe psychological stress imposed on the applicants. Numerous participants stated that they felt extremely uncomfortable about what they were expected to do, although a sizable amount of the members in the primary trials subsequently pronounced that they felt vastly pleased to have been chosen to take part in the experiment. Another immoral aspect of the experiment was the fact that the test subject was not expressly given the right to withdrawal from the experiment, and were continuously given orders to continue the experiment. Milgram claimed that in this experiment strict orders were essential to
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