Thursday, March 31, 2016
The Milgram Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment
If we look at the Milgram Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment, we can see some similarities, both in the results and their purpose. Both experiments originally were designed to test how people behaved as inferiors, with the Milgram experiment testing how they reacted to being urged on by a superior, and the Stanford Prison Experiment was originally designed to test how people reacted to being powerless. Further, both tests showed that, when gently urged by a higher authority, be it Milgram or the Stanford professors, people took the authority's instruction very seriously, even to the point of dangerous overkill. In the Milgram experiment, the subjects were willing to subject victims to high levels of voltage, much in the same way the Stanford Prison Experiment's subjects made life miserable for the "detainees". If we look at these combined factors of obedience to authority and a willingness to conform to a role, we can see the roots of what happened in Abu Ghraib. According to the documentary, the supervisors gave vague instructions to "soften the prisoners up", which the soldiers accepted as an order due to the obedience shown in Milgram's test, and became violent torturers due because of their conformity to their new role, as shown in the Stanford experiment. If we look at the world's events through the lens of these two events, we can see the root of many of the world's events.
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I think that you have good insight into the connection between these experiments. I think that these experiments are closely connected because they both changed normal people into people who did things they never imagined themselves doing. I am wondering, why would the vague orders cause them to take it to the extent that they did? Would they have still done the same thing if they had not been given such vague orders?
ReplyDeleteI think that you have good insight into the connection between these experiments. I think that these experiments are closely connected because they both changed normal people into people who did things they never imagined themselves doing. I am wondering, why would the vague orders cause them to take it to the extent that they did? Would they have still done the same thing if they had not been given such vague orders?
ReplyDeleteTo answer Arden's question, I do not think that the prison guards or the teachers in Milgram's experiment would have done the same thing if the authority had not told them to act the way they did. I believe this because if the authority told them nothing, the teachers and the prison guards would have to take responsibility for hurting the students and the prisoners that they did. Therefore, since they could not diffuse their responsibility to the authority, they would not have any desire to hurt the others in their experiment. However, I do think that the prison guards would take their roles further because they have power that they have never been given before, and it is human nature to abuse power.
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