This section was about a study conducted by Stanley Milgram. Stanley was a social psychologist that conducted a study testing obedience in Americans. The study had two participants, the learner and the teacher. The roles were decided by a random hat draw. The study went as followed; the learner would have to answer a question. Every question he got right nothing happened, but for every question wrong they would receive a shock. The shock went from 15 volts to 450 volts, instructor said the shocks would only hurt not kill. The questions were memory based; they would need to know the word sequence. It started out basics, and would progress in difficulty as time passed. At a certain point the learner would complain about the shocks hurting too much. It escalated to them mentioning a heart condition diagnosed in the past. The teacher would show signs of hesitation, but the instructor would calmly tell them to continue until they did. What surprised Stanley was that most participants would go to the highest voltage. He rewritten the script for the study multiple times, it wasn’t until the end that there was a change. The change was the percentage of participants who refused to continue the shocks. That change only occurred when the participants had to hold down the learners for their shocks. There were still more then half of the participants who went to the highest voltage. That change made Stanley realize that no matter who, a person will obey an authority figure most of the time. When I took introduction to psychology I had to talk about this very study. I had to write why someone might go through with an order like that. The main reason I found was that the burden of being responsible was lifted. In the original reading the instructor told the teacher they wouldn’t be responsible if something went wrong. For me, that was the major reason for most of the participants going through with it.
3/4/2019
Sociology Blog 