milgram, py2 essay

aims

to see if an authority figure can make ordinary citizens apparently injure others, simply by the power of the situation.
this would then support the hypothesis that some character defects in germans made obedience to authority unquestionning and total.

context

milgram was born int eh Bronx, New York to jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in 1933
although his family were religious, they were deeply conscious of their roots and heritage, while remaining patriotic Americans.
his family were profoundly affect by the second world war, with many dying in pograms and holocausts.
by his high scholl days,milgram was worried that the inhuman activites of the Nazis could be repeated in another country, so much so that his classmate Zimbardo described it as a near obssesion.

psychological explanations of the actions of 'ordianary Germans' varied rom abnormal upbringing to a moral managerial- Adorno identified the 'authoritarian personality', who obeyed orders from superiors but treated inferiors in a rigid and unfair way.
this was supposed to stem back from violent and pumitive upbringing.
this sugessted something intersting int he Germanic authority that all let itself to unquestionning authority.

however, this was contrsdicted by Arendt, who saw the operators of concentration camps as managers who had lost their self-conscious. she coined the memorable phrase, 'the banalties (ordinariness) of evil'.
milgram tended to believe, like Arendt that it was the situation, not the upbringing that turned ordianry citizens into killers.

milgram chose a career into socail psychology late in his education and was a research assitant to Asch.
he went onto conducting cross-cultural conformity experiments comparing Americans and Germans and then turned procedure he developed to research into obedience.

Q2) procedures into Milgram's 1963 research into obedience

milgram placed an advertisement in a New Haven newspaper claiming volunterrs were needed for a study into learnign and memory.
from the responses he selected 120 males aged between 20-45 years
they had a range of jobs from postal clerks to engineers and varied in educational levels from someone who hadn't finished school to doctorate
each man was given $4.50 for their participation.

the study took place in Yale University
the participants were greeted by the 'experimenter' at their arrival, a 31 year old man dressed in a grey technicains coat.
another 'participant' was at the lab, a likeable 47 year old man, Mr ....... both men were confederates of Milgram

the teacher left the learner strapped into a chair with electric shock equpiment, seemingly ready to give electric shocks during the study
the teacher moved to a room where they sat at an generator panel, supervised by the experimenter.
the shock generator had switches ranging from 15V, labelled with description of intensity, such as 'strong shock', the final 435V and 450V had a label of 'xxxx'.

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