MY FAVORIT RESEARCHER: STANLEY MILGRAM: Milgram's experimental Research

Prof. Hasan Yahya

Another example, is to show that people become under stress between conscious and unconscious brain. The subject was under two pressures, his own mind to execute an order of hurting people, and his wish NOT to execute the orders. If the subject was told that the electric shocks were fake, he will not be under stress. Here we describe how the expirement goes. Stanley Milgram study in 1963, also an experiment investigation, where a researcher explained to subjects recruited for the study, to engage in in the study. His hypothesis was punishment affects learning. Subjects began to have the role of teacher gives questions to another person (insider to the study in the next room where the teacher can see him) assigned by the researcher as the learner, to give wrong answers for the questions. The person in the other room sits on an electric chair with an electrod attached to it. The researcher asked the one who plays the role of teacher to begin asking the questions, but with certain instructions. Question begin with simple words to repeat after the teacher. After the first question wrongly answered, the teacher was instructed by the researcher to shock the learner using a "shock generator," machine shows a scale marks of volts. 5, 10, 15 as mild chocks, then 100 then 200, then the  "intense chock" mark of 300 volts. The maximum chock shows the "Danger : Severe Shock or XXX" at 450 volts. Every wrong answer, the teacher have to chock the learner for each wrong answer, the shocks were explained to the teacher that they have minor pain with no permanent damage for the learner. The experiment goes on, when the learner gave several wrong answers, shocks reached 120 volts, the learner began to shout loudly in pain. Then reached 250, the learner screemed from pain with agony. At 330 volts, the learner is close to be dead.

The findings show how readily an authority figure (the teacher here) can obtain compliance from ordinary people (the researcher in this case). Of the twenty six subjects, there was two thirds of them went all the way to kill the learner, and reach the maximum chock measure of 450 volt.

Later in his research, Milgram in 1964, reached to Asch's conclusion that people are likely to follow the direction of legitimate authority figures as well as  groups of ordinary individuals.

** [From the author's Book: Personality and Steress Management, 2008, on Amazon]