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In both experiments, the subjects experienced numerous after-effects including depression, anxiety, and tremendous guilt and they received psychological counselling afterwards.
In the case of the Zimbardo experiment, it is understandable why the prisoners would have suffered from the experience, but it is less obvious why the prison guards and the subjects in the Milgram experiment would. The Milgram subjects in particular did not actually cause any harm to anybody because the setup and the shocks were completely faked. Still, the realization of what they were capable of doing shocked them and caused them tremendous shame, guilt, and anxiety. The members of the Zimbardo experiment have held periodic reunions with Dr. Zimbardo over the years and he filmed a documentary detailing their experiences during and long after the famous experiment. Much more recently, Dr. Zimbardo investigated the abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Detention Center in Iraq and concluded that some of the very same principles he illustrated almost forty years ago were responsible.
Obedience in Different Situations:
In modern society, there are many instances where the individual is expected to obey authority figures...
Most people learn to obey authority figures at home in their family relationships when they are children. In many ways, this type of obedience training is beneficial to society, but it can also be dangerous. Relatively recent news reports detailed the abuse of high school age female employees at a fast food restaurant. An individual placed telephone calls to the office of the business and claimed to be a law enforcement officer investigating crimes committed by the female employees. He convinced total strangers to follow his instructions that began with spanking, then stripping, and finally sexually assaulting the female in the office.
The most difficult situations are those where someone with legitimate authority gives orders that are immoral and/or against the law. In some cases, the right thing to do is to follow one's conscience and ignore orders that are obviously unjustified. In cases where police or military personnel receive unlawful orders, they are authorized to disobey unlawful orders, but that can be very difficult to do because of institutional culture and also because of the consequences if their judgment was wrong and the orders were authorized after all.
Stanley Milgram on Obedience Legitimacy and Proximity: Social Influences that Determines and Generates Obedience in Stanley Milgram's Obedience Study (Behavioral Study of Obedience, 1963) For many years, psychology, as one of the main branches of social science, has tried to discern and understand human behavior and its relation to the society through empirical observation and experimentation. Social scientists, under the philosophy, methods, and principles of psychology, tried to understand human mind, particularly
Sociology Obedience, Authority, & Responsibility There are indeed, problems with obedience, as the reading's title proclaims. One problem with obedience is that if there is more than one person cohabitating in the same area, some form of obedience is necessary. Thus, on a grander scale, it is more apparent that obedience is mandatory for societies to exist and function. Another problem with obedience is how those who obey are often predisposed to
Psychology Group Dynamics Two significant topics within the area of social influence include conformity and obedience: Stanley Milgram (1933 -- 1984) and Solomon Asch (1907 -- 1996). Please complete Parts I, II, and III. Conformity According to the experiment, conformity is normally criticized basis of morality. Most human atrocities are categorized as obedience crimes. On the other hand, the experiments clarify that the conformity presents equal problematic issues on efficacy grounds. To achieve success,
Milgram Obedience, Morality and the Scientific Process in Milgram During the period between 1963 and 1974, social psychologist, professor and theorist Stanley Milgram published a landmark series of findings regarding the nature of morality, authority and obedience. Compelled by the recently revealed atrocities of the Holocaust, Milgram was driven to better understand the kinds of institutional forces that could make ostensibly ordinary men and women commit acts of such heinous proportions as
He also notes that the distress as well as the level of compliance was unexpected, and some unpredictability of any experiment must be expected by both researchers and volunteers (Milgram 1964). This type of 'follow up,' while perhaps acceptable in the 1960s would likely be seen as inadequate by modern researchers. But recently, in an essay in Granta Magazine, Ian Parker has reevaluated the obedience experiments, noting that they cast
By that time, several guards had become sadistic and the behavior of the prisoners provided clear indications of psychological breakdown. Interviews with study participants suggested that merely the perception of their respective roles influenced their behavior. More importantly, the groupthink that prevailed within the group of prison guards overcame any individual personal reluctance they may have had to treat their prisoners so harshly (Macionis 2003). The Significance of the