Chapter 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
This chapter sets up a broad overview of
the experiment. It defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links
individual action to political purpose. It briefly explains the various excuses
that people give for their immoral actions. They want to be polite and keep
their promise to the experimenter or they just don’t want to go through the
awkwardness of confronting authority and withdrawing from the experiment. They become
immersed in the technicalities and push off responsibility to the authority.
Ironically history shows that authority pushes the responsibility off to the
person you commits the final act of atrocity. I am interested to see how I
would have responded in such a situation. I also wonder how different it would
be as an experiment compared to a wartime scenario.
Chapter 2: Method of Inquiry
The second chapter focuses on the details of the experiment.
It reminds us that simplicity is key because psychological matters can get very
complicated. There moral standard occurred through this universal concept: “One
should not inflict suffering on a helpless person who is neither harmful nor
threatening to oneself”. The details that they convered included how they
obtained participants, who were the participants, the procedure, what the
victim had to learn, information about the shock generator, the sample shock,
instructions given to the participant on when/how to shock the victim, the
feedback from the experimenter, special prods, feedback from the victim, and
how the participants were debriefed. They had to experiment with the victim’s
feedback to get correct results. This need for change revealed that subjects
would obey authority to a greater extent than the first anticipated.
Chapter 3: Expected Behavior
It was interesting to see how people would predict
themselves and others to act in such an experiment. If I’m being honest, I
would have predicted the exact same thing, which is why I really want to know
how I actually would have responded to such an experiment. However, I was
surprised by how high in voltage some would predict that they would go especially
when they say they would stop there because they would have compassion,
empathy, or a sense of justice. Their predictions assume that people are by and
large decent human beings, that “the individual is preeminently the source of
his own behavior”, and that they would act in the same way as their decision.
All of these assumptions are wrong. That helps me to understand the mispredictions.
Chapter 4: Closeness of the Victim
Surprisingly to me, there were almost no participants who disobeyed
authority when the victim had no vocal complaint. So, the experiment was changed
to include 4 scenarios. In the remote feedback variation , the victim had no
vocal complaint and was put in another room. The second experiment was called
voice-feedbcak where the victim was still in an opposite room but vocal
protests could be heard. The proximity case included the victim in the same
room as the particioant. The last case was called touch-proximity, which had
the participant force the victims hand onto the shock plate. As would be
guessed, obedience decreased with each test. I was extreamly surprised that the
percentage of definance only increased by 2.5% between the first and second
tests. I would think that if the participant knew the desires of the victim,
they would comply to them.
Chapter 5: Individuals Confront Authority
This was probably the most interesting chapter so far since
it actually shed light on particular individual’s actions during the
experiment. It was scary to read about the first reaction where there was absolutely
no hesitation or tension. In the others
it was curious to see how each individual dealt with the conflict differently.
Some would just be sad, others would follow the experimenter, one transferred his
idea of an authority figure from the experiment to the victim, and the
industrial engineer just flat out said no. Again, this begs the question of how
I would act in that same circumstance.
Chapter 6: Further Variations and Controls
How does mention to a heart condition not lead to a greater disobedience?
That is really scary to see those statistics and what it means about humanity. It was also interesting to note that the appearance of the experimenter or victim did not effect the outcome. However, removing the experimenter from the room greatly increased disobedience. Other areas that were looked at included women as subjects, limits on the victim's contract, and looking at institutional context. Thankfully another experiment was done which removed the experimenter and revealed that most people do not select high voltages when they are free to choose the values.
Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II
This chapter continues to relate various stories of how subjects reacted in the experiment. For many of them it sounded like they had dual personalities. They wanted to stop, but couldn't. I was getting stressed out just reading the reports of what they had to go through. However, I then came across the account of Gretchen Brandt who restored my faith in humanity by being firm in her decision to stop applying voltage. It made me wonder what was different about her compared to the other subjects. The last subject brings up the idea of obedience in warfare - how is it different from obedience in the lab?
Chapter 8: Role Permutations
In this chapter, the experiment is again repeated but varies the appearance of authority of the victim and the experimenter. I'm surprised that they have been able to complete so many experiments without being questioned about their ethics yet. The first way that they changed the experiment is where the learner demanded to be shocked. Then, they changed how much authority the experimenter had by replacing him with the appearance of an ordinary man. Experiment 13a created the subject to be a bystander when they finally disobeyed. What was really interesting is when they created two authority figures who contradicted each other.
Chapter 9: Group Effects
In the previous chapter, they increased the number of experimenters and so for this chapter they increased the number of participants.Adding in this component allows them to evaluate between conformity and obedience. The participants conform based on hierarchy, imitation, and explicitness. They had one experiment where there were two peer rebels and another where a peer administers the shock.
Chapter 10: Why Obedience? - An Analysis
They try to answer this question first with a comparison to evolution and survival of the fittest. However, they then were able to re-explain it through a cybernetic viewpoint. The combination of these two explanations really helped me to understand the concept. This chapter also talked about hierarchical structuring, variability, and the agentic shift.
Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Questions addressed in this chapter include: what conditions will a person move from an automonous to an agentic state?, Once the shift has occured, what behavioral and psychological properties of the person are alterd?, and what keeps a person in the agentic state? (135). Some antecedent conditions of obedience include family, institutional setting, and rewards. Some properties of the agentic state include tuning, redefining the meaning of t situation, loss of responsibility, and self image.
Chapter 12: Srain and Disobedience
Some ways in which people reduce the feelings of strain are avoidance, physical conversion, dissent, and disobedience. Depending on which action is executed probably relates directly with how much stress the participate is feeling. These feelings normally stem from conflicting beliefs of morals, social norms, or self image.
Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
This short chapter covers the effect aggression has on the experiment. This is defined as the flow of destructive tendencies. The Freudian view illustrates that everyone has destructive forces, but they do not always fin ready release. The experiment creates an environment where it is okay to cause harm and actually is for the cause of science. The conclusion was that the key to the subjects behavior did not lie in their inner anger, but with their relationship to authority.
Chapter 14: Problems of Method
In this chapter, the author addressed the criticisms that other people have stated about this experiment. The main ones that he countered included that the people studied were not typical, that they didn't believe they were administering shocks to the learner, and that it is not possible to generalize from the laboratory to the larger world. These are founded concerns and questions. So, I'm glad that Dr. Milgram incorporated this chapter into his book.
Chapter 15: Epilogue
This chapter demonstrates that atrocities done in Germany could be demonstrated still today. It specifically talks about the war in Vietnam. It was interesting to read the account of the soldier. What he did was wrong, but in a military environment the stakes for disobedience are a lot higher. Questioning authority or disobeying it could result in the loss of your life or the death of the whole platoon. You also don't have all the information that your superiors have. So, I would be much more lenient about giving grace to soldiers verses people doing a volunteer experiment. I really don't think they should compare the two scenarios as equal.
Book Overview:
This experiment was really interesting to read about because it the results did not correspond with the predicted outcomes. This then raised many interesting questions about humanity, morality, and obedience. At first I was surprised that people followed authority more than their morality. However, as I continued reading, I realized there were a lot more factors that went into that decision besides just authority. Even so, it makes me scared that meaningless fears of self image can trump what someone believes in. I was also surprised to see how long the experiment lasted and how many variations of it were conducted especially since many people think it was ethically questionable. The most interesting chapters in this book were the ones that gave a word for word account of what people said during the experiment. It helped to remind me that even if they did go to the end of the experiment, most participants at least spoke up in some way to the experimenter that what they were doing was wrong. Some people just have a stronger backbone of confronting people. I think that our society focuses a lot on tolerance and making sure not to offend others. So, I wonder if this experiment was conducted of solely Americans or solely people in Germany, would the results be different. This topic was briefly covered in chapter 14, but it would be interesting to have a more in depth study of it. (Howdy! if you have read through all of this for every one's blog, I am thoroughly impressed and you deserve a medal.) Psychology is such an interesting field because no two people are the same, but there can be generalizations. For example most people went through with the experiment, but they all had varying reactions to it. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and being able to see how people interact with each other especially since I have never had a psychology class. However, as it got towards the end, I began to loose interest because I for some reason saw it as repetitive. Relating this book to computer science, it is scary to think that a computer that is giving instructions could have the authority to produce the same outcomes. What happens if there is a bug in the code? Will the user still execute the order even if they think it is wrong? Or will they think that the computer is wrong and go look for the human programmer to double check? This has a lot of interesting food for thought.
Chapter 7: Individuals Confront Authority II
This chapter continues to relate various stories of how subjects reacted in the experiment. For many of them it sounded like they had dual personalities. They wanted to stop, but couldn't. I was getting stressed out just reading the reports of what they had to go through. However, I then came across the account of Gretchen Brandt who restored my faith in humanity by being firm in her decision to stop applying voltage. It made me wonder what was different about her compared to the other subjects. The last subject brings up the idea of obedience in warfare - how is it different from obedience in the lab?
Chapter 8: Role Permutations
In this chapter, the experiment is again repeated but varies the appearance of authority of the victim and the experimenter. I'm surprised that they have been able to complete so many experiments without being questioned about their ethics yet. The first way that they changed the experiment is where the learner demanded to be shocked. Then, they changed how much authority the experimenter had by replacing him with the appearance of an ordinary man. Experiment 13a created the subject to be a bystander when they finally disobeyed. What was really interesting is when they created two authority figures who contradicted each other.
Chapter 9: Group Effects
In the previous chapter, they increased the number of experimenters and so for this chapter they increased the number of participants.Adding in this component allows them to evaluate between conformity and obedience. The participants conform based on hierarchy, imitation, and explicitness. They had one experiment where there were two peer rebels and another where a peer administers the shock.
Chapter 10: Why Obedience? - An Analysis
They try to answer this question first with a comparison to evolution and survival of the fittest. However, they then were able to re-explain it through a cybernetic viewpoint. The combination of these two explanations really helped me to understand the concept. This chapter also talked about hierarchical structuring, variability, and the agentic shift.
Chapter 11: The Process of Obedience: Applying the Analysis to the Experiment
Questions addressed in this chapter include: what conditions will a person move from an automonous to an agentic state?, Once the shift has occured, what behavioral and psychological properties of the person are alterd?, and what keeps a person in the agentic state? (135). Some antecedent conditions of obedience include family, institutional setting, and rewards. Some properties of the agentic state include tuning, redefining the meaning of t situation, loss of responsibility, and self image.
Chapter 12: Srain and Disobedience
Some ways in which people reduce the feelings of strain are avoidance, physical conversion, dissent, and disobedience. Depending on which action is executed probably relates directly with how much stress the participate is feeling. These feelings normally stem from conflicting beliefs of morals, social norms, or self image.
Chapter 13: An Alternative Theory: Is Aggression the Key?
This short chapter covers the effect aggression has on the experiment. This is defined as the flow of destructive tendencies. The Freudian view illustrates that everyone has destructive forces, but they do not always fin ready release. The experiment creates an environment where it is okay to cause harm and actually is for the cause of science. The conclusion was that the key to the subjects behavior did not lie in their inner anger, but with their relationship to authority.
Chapter 14: Problems of Method
In this chapter, the author addressed the criticisms that other people have stated about this experiment. The main ones that he countered included that the people studied were not typical, that they didn't believe they were administering shocks to the learner, and that it is not possible to generalize from the laboratory to the larger world. These are founded concerns and questions. So, I'm glad that Dr. Milgram incorporated this chapter into his book.
Chapter 15: Epilogue
This chapter demonstrates that atrocities done in Germany could be demonstrated still today. It specifically talks about the war in Vietnam. It was interesting to read the account of the soldier. What he did was wrong, but in a military environment the stakes for disobedience are a lot higher. Questioning authority or disobeying it could result in the loss of your life or the death of the whole platoon. You also don't have all the information that your superiors have. So, I would be much more lenient about giving grace to soldiers verses people doing a volunteer experiment. I really don't think they should compare the two scenarios as equal.
Book Overview:
This experiment was really interesting to read about because it the results did not correspond with the predicted outcomes. This then raised many interesting questions about humanity, morality, and obedience. At first I was surprised that people followed authority more than their morality. However, as I continued reading, I realized there were a lot more factors that went into that decision besides just authority. Even so, it makes me scared that meaningless fears of self image can trump what someone believes in. I was also surprised to see how long the experiment lasted and how many variations of it were conducted especially since many people think it was ethically questionable. The most interesting chapters in this book were the ones that gave a word for word account of what people said during the experiment. It helped to remind me that even if they did go to the end of the experiment, most participants at least spoke up in some way to the experimenter that what they were doing was wrong. Some people just have a stronger backbone of confronting people. I think that our society focuses a lot on tolerance and making sure not to offend others. So, I wonder if this experiment was conducted of solely Americans or solely people in Germany, would the results be different. This topic was briefly covered in chapter 14, but it would be interesting to have a more in depth study of it. (Howdy! if you have read through all of this for every one's blog, I am thoroughly impressed and you deserve a medal.) Psychology is such an interesting field because no two people are the same, but there can be generalizations. For example most people went through with the experiment, but they all had varying reactions to it. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and being able to see how people interact with each other especially since I have never had a psychology class. However, as it got towards the end, I began to loose interest because I for some reason saw it as repetitive. Relating this book to computer science, it is scary to think that a computer that is giving instructions could have the authority to produce the same outcomes. What happens if there is a bug in the code? Will the user still execute the order even if they think it is wrong? Or will they think that the computer is wrong and go look for the human programmer to double check? This has a lot of interesting food for thought.
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