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Essay On Milgram's Baseline Experiment

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Milgram’s baseline experiment was to study whether people would comply with an authority figure during a brutal experiment or if they would utilize their own morals to make the experiment stop. This study was influenced by the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes. For his experiment he had taught an accomplice to pretend to receive electric shocks. The experimental subject/administrator was placed in front of some sort of dial and they were told would give them incrementing levels of shock to the actor. The administrator would then ask a series of questions and if he answered incorrectly the actor would then receive an electric shock. Each time the actor answered incorrectly the amount of voltage would increase. The subject was told this was a component of the experiment and that the person they were querying the shocks to had a heart condition. Milgram 's implications for the study of obedience to authority are pretty straightforward, if a person is in authority, or if they look like they are in authority, requests some sort of action or favor from someone they are more liable to do it for them rather than if another normal, average person were to ask them to do something. So fundamentally people do very immoral, corrupt things if someone of authority told them to do …show more content…

The Abu Ghraib abuse is a real life example of what had happened in the experiment. American soldiers in the 2003 Iraq war trapped prisoners in detention sites which resulted in the American soldiers playing a role of prison guards. The soliders got so hooked to their roles of guards that they started abusing the prisoners. The violations included torture, physical and sexual abuse, rape, and murder. This just proves Zimbardo’s studies were true, that we all believe we are good but people can change due to influence and power. The soldiers all experienced stress, fear, and boredom, which mixed together with all the added up power they each had, caused them to do unimaginable

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