Essay About Stanley Milgram And Persons Tendency

The Pearls of Obedience
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In this article “The Pearls of Obedience”, Stanley Milgram asserts that
obedience to authority is a common response for many people in
todays society, often diminishing an individuals beliefs or ideals.
Stanley Milgram designs an experiment to understand how strong a
persons tendency to obey authority is, even though it is amoral or
destructive. Stanley Milgram bases his experiment on three people: a
learner, teacher, and experimenter. The experimenter is simply an
overseer of the experiment, and is concerned with the outcome of
punishing the learner. The teacher, who is the subject of the
experiment, is made to believe the electrical shocks are real; he is
responsible for obeying the experimenter and punishing the learner
for incorrect answers by electrocuting him from an electric shock
panel that increases from 15 to 450 volts. The learner is actually an
actor who is strapped to a harmless electric chair. He is told several
pairs of words, and must remember and repeat these pairings with
the make-believe fear of being electrocuted for incorrect answers.
The foretold outcome or this experiment was expressed by
several people who are familiar with behavioral sciences. They
predicted that the majority of subjects would not pass 150 volts, and
that a few crazed lunatics would reach the maximum voltage. This
conclusion was disproved from Milgrams experiment. The majority of
the subjects obeyed the experimenter to the end. There were several
reactions to the experiment. Some people showed signs of tension or
stress, others laughed, and some showed no signs of discomfort
throughout the experiment. Subjects often felt satisfaction by
obeying the experimenter. This gives proof to the belief that many
people obey authority to show they are doing a good job, and
perceived as loyal by the experimenter or society, which ever the case
may be.
One theory used to explain this experiment, is one of hidden
aggression. According to this concept, people suppress aggressive
behavior, and the experiment allows them to express this anger.
Therefore when an individual is placed in a situation where he has
control over another individual, whom he is able to punish repeatedly,
all demented and hidden anger will be revealed. This theory is put in
question, when a variation of Stanley Milgrams original experiment is
described. This experiment enables the subject, not the
experimenter,