Stanley Milgram's Social Psychological Experiments
In 1963, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a series of social psychology experiments to study the conditions under which the people are obedient to authorities and personal conscience. The purpose of his experiment was to determine whether or not people were particularly obedient to the higher authority who instructed them to perform various acts even if they violate their own morals and ethics. It was one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology as it has inspired other researchers to explore what makes people question authority and more importantly, what leads them to follow orders. There were several replications of his experiment and the results were identical to those reported by Milgram about how
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Several minutes later Lieutenant Calley returns and says “How come they aren’t dead?” The soldiers then turn to kill them although some seemed apparently uncomfortable and unwilling to do so. The situation in which the soldiers are left alone with prisoners display a similar behavior as witnessed with Why My Lai 1st semester project 46 the subject in the above mentioned experiment. After leaving the soldiers alone with the orders to “take care of them” they show subtle sympathy towards the gathered prisoners in “sparing” their lives rather than shooting them right away. This of course can be interpreted in the individual soldiers’ sense of moral ethics towards his fellow man, but under the circumstances of this specific, somewhat chaotic and brutal event one could just as much assume they are meant to kill the prisoners instead of simply guarding them. Comparing this situation with the experiment we encounter a slight problem when taking the concept of consequence into consideration. For the participant in the experiment there was no immediate consequence in not being obedient to the experimenter and raising the shock level when required. However, for the soldiers in the mentioned situation, they faced an authority figure which during the massacre was known to be life threatening towards the soldiers if they did not do what was ordered. The results of the experiment and the mentioned example differ as we look closer at a situational perspective; nonetheless we see similarities of the two when looking at the result of the given order in the absence of authority. The soldiers involved in My Lai were all part of an institution larger and more powerful than any of those used in the Milgram
Several minutes later Lieutenant Calley returns and says “How come they aren’t dead?” The soldiers then turn to kill them although some seemed apparently uncomfortable and unwilling to do so. The situation in which the soldiers are left alone with prisoners display a similar behavior as witnessed with Why My Lai 1st semester project 46 the subject in the above mentioned experiment. After leaving the soldiers alone with the orders to “take care of them” they show subtle sympathy towards the gathered prisoners in “sparing” their lives rather than shooting them right away. This of course can be interpreted in the individual soldiers’ sense of moral ethics towards his fellow man, but under the circumstances of this specific, somewhat chaotic and brutal event one could just as much assume they are meant to kill the prisoners instead of simply guarding them. Comparing this situation with the experiment we encounter a slight problem when taking the concept of consequence into consideration. For the participant in the experiment there was no immediate consequence in not being obedient to the experimenter and raising the shock level when required. However, for the soldiers in the mentioned situation, they faced an authority figure which during the massacre was known to be life threatening towards the soldiers if they did not do what was ordered. The results of the experiment and the mentioned example differ as we look closer at a situational perspective; nonetheless we see similarities of the two when looking at the result of the given order in the absence of authority. The soldiers involved in My Lai were all part of an institution larger and more powerful than any of those used in the Milgram