Stanley Milgram Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Stanley Milgram - Essay ExampleThe respondents (teachers) should switch on electric shocks of distinct voltage if learners (persons recruited by Milgram) made mistakes in their responses. The experiment showed that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks-up to 450 volts-to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific authority commanded them to (Milgram Basics). So, there is a question is it possible that an ordinary person (e.g. the teacher) will obey authority so blindly that they will harm another (e.g. the learner) As the experiment shows, it is rather possible, and this possibility is determined by our attitude to authority and the features of human nature. In the experiment the respondents were say that the experimenter was responsible for the punishment results, and teachers decided to punish the learners having taken into account this fact. But in addition to that, the teachers were less wil ling to punish in the following cases when the experimenter communicated with them via telephone, and when the teachers should held the learners quite a little on the shock plate.