Pages

Monday, 3 April 2017

The "Milgram Experiment"

The "Milgram Experiment" by Saul McClead

The "Milgram Experiment" by Saul McClead is an article about how people react and respond to the orders of a figure of authority and what extent they're willing to go to in order to obey the orders given.

In this experiment, the subjects are giving the role of a "Teacher".  The Teachers role is to administer electric shocks to their patients when they answer a question incorrectly. The shock generators had 30 switches, each switch administers a shock more intense than the previous switch.  The strength of the shock started with 15 volts, enough to cause slight shock, all the way to 450 volts which is fatal.  (The story isn't correct because the volts will not kill you, the amps are what cause death.)

Throughout the expiriement 65% (26 out of 40) continued to administer the lethal shocks.  Personally, this is not a surprising statistic to me, through childhood we are taught to obey any form of authority or to obey anyone who outranks us (eg, parents, teachers, police etc).  Since this is an instinct formed from childhood it is of no surprise to me that people are willing to follow out actions when told to do so.

The whole point of the experiment was to test the morals of the Nazis who contributed to the genocide occurring during the holocaust.  They wanted to test if the German population involved did what they did because they believed their actions were justified or if they only did it because they had pressure put on them by an authorative figure.

5 comments:

  1. grate werk flynn

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey flynn, you should use some more fullstops

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Lol capital "H" for "Hey", maybe next time buddy. Also you forgot a full stop as well seriously get rekt.

      Delete
  3. Your 3rd paragraph is very strong Flynn. You provide your opinions on the text and support your discussion with evidence from the text. I also quite like your personal voice coming through in paragraph 2 (the volts aren't what kill you...).

    The important thing to remember about reading logs is that you need to try to interweave your opinions with evidence. Providing a summary, and then providing your opinion, unfortunately will earn a Not Achieved in this standard. The key is to go back and forth - touch on your ideas about the text, and support your discussion with content from the text itself (evidence).

    I quite enjoy your writing Flynn. Keep it up. :)

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.