Analysis of Student Obedience to Authority
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In the 1970s, Dr. Stanley Milgram, professor of psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, published the results of a series of experiments on the tendency of subjects to accede to authority even to the point of performing acts which they themselves considered unethical or immoral. The issue raised by Milgram and examined by him in his research is the disjunction between an individual's personal moral sense and his or her actions when performed under someone else's orders. The dichotomy is between conscience and authority. The subjects in the film performed acts under orders that they would never perform on their own, and they were able to do so without the interference of their conscience so long as conditions were such as to induce their cooperation. Only the individual who lives in a remote area entirely alone escapes the role of social authority completely and can act only according to his or her conscience without pressure to do otherwise. The individual in a social setting who acts only according to his or her conscience will most certainly do so in a context of pressure and even coercion to act otherwise on certain occasions. Some societies enforce their strictures more directly and strenuously than do others, but all societies in some degree try to enforce conformity on members, at least in certain areas of conduct. Thus, these experiments have much to say about the social order, how it is achieved and maintained, and what this might
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context of an interaction between the experimenter, representing authority, the teacher, and the learner. The teacher was required to raise the voltage level by one switch for each error made by the learner. The learner gave correct answers 25 percent of the time: "Milgram's experiment is unique in using verbal commands that blatantly contradict the subject's wishes. The element of authority seems to occur most vividly at the third prod--'It is absolutely essential that you continue'" (Miller, 1986, p. 60).
Milgram showed in these experiments that people tend to obey authority even when their personal beliefs go against what they are being told to do. Some of the subjects devalued the learner as a way of justifying what they were doing, in effect blaming the victim for getting the wrong answer and so for bringing the punishment on himself:
Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out. This was seen time and again in our studies and has been observed in several universities where the experiment was repeated. It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any
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Approximate Word count = 1504
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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