Milgram's Experiments Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Milgram's Experiments - Essay Example After World War II, in the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, a common defense of those accused of these crimes against humanity was "obedience.". The prevalence of this justification is what prompted Stanley Milgram to perform his experiments. Milgram's experiments focused on the conflict between obedience to authority and a person's conscience. Milgram recruited participants through newspaper advertisements calling for anyone interested in getting paid for participating in an experiment supposedly intending to determine the effect of punishment on learning. The participant (the subject) is introduced to a stern-looking experimenter in a white coat and to a second 'participant' that the subject understands was recruited in the same way that he was. This second participant, who is pleasant and friendly to the subject, is actually an accomplice of the experimenter. Under the directions of the experimenter the subject, given the role of "teacher", is made to inflict electric shocks of increasing power for every mistake that the other "participant" (the "learner") makes in answering some questions. The experimenter and the teacher are in the same room while the learner is in an adjoining room. 65% of the teachers obeyed all orders and went to the maximum of 450 volts administered to the learner, even though most of the subjects were extremely uncomfortable in delivering the punishment. None of the subjects stopped "punishing" before reaching 300 volts.