In 1975 Milgram directed an experiment to study whether the Nazi killings in world war II carried out by the Germans, was due to the fact that the Germans were obedient to authority figures as this was the most common justification. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?
The acts committed of the genocide at World War II were scrutinised and studied. How far were people willing to take orders and carry them out even if it involved harming another person and how easily were they influenced? This was the foundation of his interest.
Therefore, Milgram conducted a study in which he recruited male participants through advertising in a newspaper which took place at Yale University. The participant was paired with another person to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. However, the draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was a confederate (pretending to be a real participant).
They both received a list of word pairs; however the learner was attached to an electric chair in another room and was tested on the word pairs by the confederate. Each time the learner got an answer wrong, a shock …show more content…
Here we shun our responsibility and we no longer consider our own behaviour. He believed that the participants were 'just following orders' and did not reflect or hold themselves responsible for what they were doing. It is the psychological state the obedient subject is in, when he or she is obeying authority. In this essay, evidence will be used to discuss whether individuals enter the agentic state when the individuals are submissive from different
The acts committed of the genocide at World War II were scrutinised and studied. How far were people willing to take orders and carry them out even if it involved harming another person and how easily were they influenced? This was the foundation of his interest.
Therefore, Milgram conducted a study in which he recruited male participants through advertising in a newspaper which took place at Yale University. The participant was paired with another person to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. However, the draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was a confederate (pretending to be a real participant).
They both received a list of word pairs; however the learner was attached to an electric chair in another room and was tested on the word pairs by the confederate. Each time the learner got an answer wrong, a shock …show more content…
Here we shun our responsibility and we no longer consider our own behaviour. He believed that the participants were 'just following orders' and did not reflect or hold themselves responsible for what they were doing. It is the psychological state the obedient subject is in, when he or she is obeying authority. In this essay, evidence will be used to discuss whether individuals enter the agentic state when the individuals are submissive from different