Investigating The Nature Of Obedience - 1683 Words

Investigating the Nature of Obedience: The Relevance of Milgram’s Experiment Stanley Milgram managed to conduct several experiments that reveal the distinct features of the members of our society. He questioned how millions of ordinary people in Germany could obey the immoral commands of the Nazi government and conducted the experiment exploring the mechanisms of human obedience to authorities. Though Milgram’s experiment has provoked a huge amount of criticism, the analysis of internal and external validity, ethical issues, and the contribution of the experiment to modern science reveals the significance of the findings of the study. The experiment was designed to find out to which extent ordinary people are ready to hurt other innocent†¦show more content†¦After using Yale undergraduates as the subjects of the study, the author was condemned for lack of objectivity in the experiment, as this category of people share similar features, including high competitiveness and aggressiveness aimed at achieving success. Therefore, Miller changed the strategy and selected the participants who were representatives of different social groups, including â€Å"professionals, white-collar workers, unemployed persons, and industrial workers† (Miller 362). It let the researcher make conclusions that reflect the disposition peculiar to all members of the society. Besides, Miller conducted the same experiment in different regions (Princeton, Munich, Rome, South Africa, and Australia), where the participants included people of different nations and religions. Such strategy makes the results of the experiment relevant to any country. Baumrind claimed that as the experiment was held in the laboratory, the atmosphere of the place created certain pressure on the subjects because of the unfamiliarity with the setting (372). The psychologist emphasized that â€Å"the anxiety and passivity generated by the setting† contributed to the participants’ inclination to â€Å"behave in an obedient suggestible way† (Baumrind 372). However, Milgram has conducted another experiment by renting a place in Bridgeport and presenting it as a commercial organization. The results of the study did not show much