Obediance / hierarchy / states study

• We are an agent of an authority figure , the responsibility is with the person higher up the social hierarchy
• If at the moment , someone tells you to do something , y ou are in the agentic state
• Being in the agentic state make people do acts that they are normallly morally opposed to . It is called a moral strain
• When people are in the agnetic state , they may feel bad , confuse , annoyed , stressed , upset , angry
• You are in the agentic state when someone higher than you in the hierarchy or someone you appreciate and know ask you to do something harmless
• In 1961 , Milgram conducted an experiment to see to which extent people would obey to the orders from someone higher in the hierarchy . He wanted to investigate how far would people go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person , following the event of World War II
• Volunteers were recruted for a controlled experiment investigating 'learning' . The participant consisted of 40 males aged between 20 and 50 years old and were paid £4.5 for their participation
• Each volunteer was introduced to another participant ( a confederate of the experiment ) and was assigned to the position of learner (L ) or teacher (T) , the assignment of role was fixed , the tteacher and the learner were both confederate . An experimenter (E) was also present
• The experimenter would give instructions to the participant to give the learner an electric shock if he got wrong on an answer.
• If the teacher would stop sending elecrtical shock , four prods were said to him :

  • Please continue / Please go on
  • The experiment requires you to continue
  • It is absolutely essential that you go on
  • You have no other choice , you must go on
• While the shocks were increasing , the participants were not aware of this . When the teacher got to increase voltage , the Learner pounded on the wall and then stopped giving responses to the next questions
• After the experiment was over , all the participants were subjects and victims of the true purpose of the study
• 65% of the participants continued to the highest level of electrical shock . All of the participants continued to 300 volts and 35% of participants stopped at 300 volts
• Observed characteristics of the participants showed symptoms indicating nervousness . Such as , sweating , trembling , stuttering , bite their lips , groaning and digging their fingernails into their hands . Three participants had seizures
• The American participants in this study were willing to follow orders , in the knowledge that it 'hurt' another person . This showed that there was nothing due to a strange comportment about German soldiers that made them follow 'Hitler's decisions