Summary: a Summary of Stanley Milgram’s “the Perils of Obedience”

Bailey Willoughby

Mrs. Northouse

W131 B2

21 Aug. 2012

A Summary of Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience”

In Stanley Milgram’s article, “The Perils of Obedience”, he describes an experiment where they test the conflict between obedience and conscience, and he claims that the majority of people will follow orders given by and authoritative figure before listening to their own moral reasoning.

This experiment performed by Stanley Milgram took advantage of human nature in which listening to authority was put to the test against the moral reasoning of people who are subjected to harming others. The experiment involves a “teacher” and a “learner.” The teacher is ordered by the researcher to shock the learner every time he gets a wrong answer. The shock levels administered to the learner range from a measly fifteen volts to a whopping 450 volts. What the teacher does not know though, is that he/she is the actual subject being studied by the researcher and the person believed to be the learner is actually an actor to whom no electric shock is administered.

Milgram had researched his experiment by asking people what they thought the results would be. They believed that few people would get to 450 volts and many would stop, but it was actually quite the opposite. The first experiments resulted in a 60% obedience rate while in the later trials at other various locations the number jumped to a whopping 85% obedience rate (Milgram 696). Regardless, some of the people felt remorse or regret during and after the experiment. This started when the actor groans and screams in pain. This just so happens to start conflict within the teachers mind when the voltage becomes higher and the actor’s cries for help increase in volume and magnitude. This however did not change the fact that they kept administering the shock after given orders to do so by the experimenter.

A variation of the experiment took place where the teacher was able to choose the voltage after each...