Contribution of Miligram to Psychology World - Research Paper Example

Topic:  Historical significance and contributions of the social psychologist named Stanley Milgram Introduction In the field of socio – psychology Stanley Milgram set out to discover why, and under what circumstances people obey authority. The experiment launched by Milgram was one of the most inventive and controversial one in the history of social psychology field. Stanley Milgram was a young assistant professor with a degree in social psychology from Havard. His experiments intrigued people and sometimes trouble them.Milgram was a man of many interests. In fact he saw himself as a renaissance man.Miligram was a complex individual whose personality and actions were sometimes, enigmatic, resulting in polarized reactions of either affection or disdain from others. But traits that made him one of outstanding scientist of his generation and worthy of our attention were a voracious curiosity of creativity that enable him to satisfy it. Milgram was a researcher, scientist, speaker, teacher and a writer. Stanley Milgram was born in Bronx on August 15 1933, to Samuel and Adele Milgram, both Jewish immigrants from Easter Europe. He did schooling in James Monroe High school and graduated in Queens College receiving a B.A. with honors. In later years,he got interested in psychology and got selected to go to Harvard’s social relation program. He later studied in New York University and Brooklyn College for psychology studies and finally did graduation in Harvard University. According to ( Blass,2004,pg.140) “Stanley Milgram entered the public consciousness- with a jolt - in the fall of 1963”. Historical significance of Stanly Milgram The historical significance of Stanley Milgram can be related to his studies of obedience. This research is among the most important in human psychology and certainly the most controversial psychological research ever done. It was the basis for two hour television dramatization, The Tenth level with William shatner of Star Trek fame in the leading role as the experimenter. No other research in psychology had come this close to getting this much public attention. The emotional reaction to the research has been extreme, both within and outside the field of psychology. Why was this research so impressive and why does it continue to fascinate students and scholars? First, it deals with a significant issue that find relevance within normal life as well as nightmares of history. Second the design is creative, well controlled and carried out through series of experiments designed to investigate various explanation. That design included a variety of deceptions. Finally the result was not only the extent to which people will obey an order to harm another person, but the extreme emotional discomfort experienced by the participants in the research. The use of deception and the strong negative effects on some participants led to an intense debate on the ethics of these studies .Milgram suggested that his experiments were important in the field of psychology because even sophisticated psychologists could predict what people would do. According to (Vos, 2009,pg 223-246 )“ The Milgram experiment was probably one of the most well known experiments of the psy – sciences” Some of Milgram’s strongest critics, as well as his supporters, admire his creativity in designing this situation. The design of the obedience studies was a direct result of Milligram’s involvement in group pressure research and his contact with Asch, who was his mentor. The experiment of Milgram was to discover the limit to which people would be obedient to authority. In the experiment, the subjects were ordered to inflict pain on an innocent victim in the interests of an important cause. In her journal ( Sanchez ,2006,pg 23-30)“Stanley Milgram's 1960s experimental findings that people would administer apparently lethal electric shocks to a stranger at the behest of an authority figure remain critical for understanding obedience” Authority was represented by a scientist in a white coat who would continually urge the subject to proceed with administrating electric shocks to a third person. In fact, there was no electric shock involved but the third person merely behaved as if there had been one.Milgram found out that 60% of subjects obeyed instruction to administer high dose of electricity even after victim given up screaming.Milgram’s research on obedience to authority represents the definitive contribution of social psychology to the corpus of scientific knowledge, which begin in 1898, empirically demonstrated the power of the situations to affect human behaviors. Milgram embarked on the most controversial research line in the brief history of social science. Contribution of Miligram to psychology world Milgram’s research led to important insights. First he showed that physical proximity moderated levels of destructive obedience. The closer the experimenter stood the administer the more likely he was to fully comply. Milgrams’ obedience research uncovered the single greatest cause the holocaust, thereby demonstrating the banality of evil.Milgram has contributed immensely to upgrade our knowledge about the human behavior. In his website article (Hawk,2007)writes that “What Milgram wanted to know was how far humans will go when an authority figure orders them to hurt another human being”. The important contributions of the Stanley Mailgram during the early sixties present us with another outstanding example of the possibilities inherent in the use of experimental method in this field. Perhaps more than any other empirical contribution in the history, of social science, the research of Mailgram has become the part of the society’s intelligence legacy. His work is a testament to the boarder human significance of the obedience work that disciplines outside of psychology. The major advantage of Mailgram’s design was that it could systematically vary to explore other important factors affecting the extent of obedience. The obedience experiment also played a role, though a lesser one, in another type of social perceptual phenomena – stereotyping. The obedience paradigm of Mailgram have been used in various social researches and thoughts.Miligram proved to the world that everyone has the dual capacity both to function as an individual capable of exercising their own moral judgment, and to make ethical decisions based on their personal character. However, two – third of us men and women alike are capable of heinous behavior when, in deference to authority, we allow our own moral judgment to be overruled. The interpretations that can be placed on Milgram’s findings, together with the ethical issues, are still debated. Through his experiment, Mailgram tried to explain – not justify- phenomena as barbaric as those which took place in the Nazi death camp during the Second World War. How could people collaborate en masse to cause pain to innocent beings just because they were ordered to do so? According to (Cherry,2011)“While Mailgram’s research raised serious ethical questions about the use of human subjects in psychology experiments, his results have also been consistently replicated in further experiments”Milgram’s contribution to social psychology extend beyond his research on interconnectivity.Milgram began a series of experiments on obedience and from his work developed a theory of agency. This theory suggests that individual conscience can operate in two distinct states: an autonomous states in which behavior are seen as self – directed, and an agentic state in which people see themselves as agents of others. We learn to function in these two stages from an early stage, as we respond first to parental authority and then to host of other individuals similarly positioned above us in social hierarchy- members of various institution. Milligram went on to make a number of other original contributions. In 1970 he introduced the concept of overload as a way to understand urban/rural difference in social behavior. Later he introduced an unobtrusive way of measuring community attitudes and opinions. In 1967, Milgram introduced a technique of studying the small world – phenomena. Conclusion Mailgram is anything but a larger than life scientist who created the obedience experiment.Miligram saw much more than a researcher.Milgram’s work on obedience stands – by itself – an indestructible monolith on an uninhabited plain. As per (Blass,200,pg.16)“ just as Miligram was a fount for innovative ideas, he also absorbed other ideas quickly”. Besides the obedience studies , which he conducted in his twenties, he went on to do other pioneering research on city life, the media, cognitive maps, and a score of divertive topics that made him one of the few social scientists to directly impact our popular culture p including Broadway theatre .Yet the fact is that Milgram was also a teacher throughout his career. Despite Mailgram’s dedication to teaching, the alumni who studied with him number in dozens rather than hundreds. Milgram himself acknowledged that,unlike other key social psychologists, he headed no theoretical schools or social psychology that would attract students into a systematic research program, comparable to theories of cognitive dissonance or attribution. Certainly those close to Milgram, saw more than a researcher. In fact his flair for research was one of a unique combination of several equally rare talents. Like Da Vinci, his powerful mind probed and integrated an immense ken, ranging from brain physiology and video technology to abstract art and virtual reality. He was a riveting and popular lecturer, who could communicate nuances in few words that a transcribed tape recording of his speech often reads like finished prose. Bibliogrpahy Blass, T. (2004). The man who shocked the world: the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram (p. 14). New York: Basic Books. Blass, T. (2000). Obedience to authority - Current persepctive on the Miligram Paradigm (p. 16). Mahwah: Taylor & Francis. Cherry, K. (2011). The Milgram Obedience Experiment. In About. Retrieved November 25, 2011, from http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.html. De vos, J. (2009). Now that you know how, do you feel- The Milgram Experiment and Psychologization. Annual Review of Critical psychology, 7(2), 223-246. Hawk, T. (2000). Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority Or Just Conformity?. In Psyblog. Retrieved February 21, 2007, from http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/02/stanley-milgram-obedience-to-authority.php Sanchez - Vives, M. V. (2006, December 20). A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments. Plos One, 12(10), 23-30. Read More