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Milgram: obedience to authority

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Obedience to authority

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Milgram’s study of obedience

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In Milgram’s experiment, the ‘learner’ (a confederate) was a mild-mannered 47 year old male.

He mentioned that he had suffered from a heart complaint in the past, but was still willing to participate in the study.

Milgram’s study of obedience

The experimenter used the following standardized prompts whenever the ‘teacher’ objected, such as:

“please continue” or “please go on”“the experiment requires that you continue”“it is absolutely essential that you continue”“you have no other choice, you must go on”.

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Milgram’s results

Milgram’s findings suggest that obedience to authority is in human nature, and people will obey orders that go against

their conscience when put in certain situations.

Every participant in the experiment gave at least 300V shocks to the ‘learner’.65% of participants went all the way to administering 450V(XXX).

Milgram’s results showed surprisingly high levels of obedience:

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The procedure put the participants under extreme pressure. Many participants showed signs of extreme distress such as sweating, trembling, biting their lip, and digging their fingernails into their flesh. Some even protested and wanted to stop.

Participants’ response

One participant, before proceeding to give the learner the full 450V, said:Although the participants protested verbally, their behaviour was obedient.

Milgram conducted extensive debriefing (where the participants are informed about the true nature of the study) and post-experiment interviews. Many participants reported

that they were glad they took part because they learned something valuable about themselves.