Stanley Milgram s Influence On The Human Mind - 872 Words

Throughout the last century there have been many highly influential psychologists across the globe. Through extensive experimentation and research, these psychologists have revealed many surprising truths about human nature and the thought process behind our actions. Although these experiments have given us a great deal of insight into the human mind, many of them have been surrounded by a lot of controversy. An American man named Stanley Milgram conducted one of such experiments. Stanley Milgram was born in New York City on August 15th, 1933 to a family of Jewish immigrants. He attended James Monroe High School, with another famous future psychologist, Philip Zimbardo. Reportedly, Milgram was a determined kid and he managed to graduate†¦show more content†¦Milgram was working as a professor at Yale University, when he began conducting a series of experiments that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and obeying authority (Cherry, 2004). At the time, many peop le were accused of affiliating with Nazis during World War II. A popular justification given by those on trial was that they were only following orders. The study began just one year after Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. Milgram’s experiment was devised to answer the question, Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices? (McLeod, 2007). For the experiment, Milgram required a number of volunteer test subjects and one very good actor. Forty average male participants, between age 20 and 50, were recruited from the New Haven area. Each was paid $4.50 for just showing up. At the beginning of the experiment, they were each introduced to another participant, who was actually an actor hired by Milgram. The volunteers were told that they were taking part in scientific research to improve memory. They drew straws to determine their roles – leaner or teacher –however, unb eknown to the volunteers, this was fixed and the actor always ended up the learner. There was also the â€Å"experimenter† dressed in a grey lab coat, played by another hired actor. The teacher and the learner were then separated by a screen,