Milgram Study

Last week in my psycology class we were reviewing examples of why normal people do bad things to other people We went over the Jewish concentration camps and attempted to understand why normal human being were intentionally inflicting pain on others. We watched a video about the Stanley Milgram Study in Stanford. After watching the movie I came home and researched other finding by him. In Why Good People Do Bad Things by Stanley Milgran he attempts to study the reason behind people’s actions. Milgram’s experiment gives us an understanding of what factors are associated with people’s actions when doing wrong. His series of experiments tested how people respond to authority figures when faced with difficult decisions such as hurting other person.  The experiments revealed that even good people who have set values tend to do bad things when asked to do so.

In Milgrams study the participants were given a task, they were asked to administer a shock wave to the other person every time that person got an answer incorrect. The participant administering the shock was cognizant of how intense the shock waves were and how severe they can get. This study was administered to different groups of people and the outcome remained the same. The study demonstrated that the majority of people are willing to compromise their personal values in order to complete the task the authority figure implemented. Many of these people were sentient of how wrong and immoral their action was, yet they still continued to obey because they felt a sense of responsibility to the authority figure.

Vocabulary Words

Sentient- Able to perceive or feel things

Cognizant- Having knowledge or being aware of