Watch the two videos on the Milgram Obedience Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Please answer the following questions:
For the Milgram experiment:
1) What was the alleged premise of the Milgram experiment as told by the experimenter?
2) What was the response of the experimenter when the subject said, ” How far can we go on this thing?”
3) What was the responses of the subjects who refused to continue?
4) What is the implication of the laughter displayed by some of the subjects?
5) Describe the responses of those subjects who continued despite the objections and pleadings of the one getting shocked.
6) The percentage of subjects who continued to the end was over 50%..an even higher percentage went past the voltage when the shocks started to inflict pain..why do you think this happened?
7) What does this experiment suggest about the power of “authority” and “obedience”?
8) What happened in follow-up experiments when the subjects could actually see or touch the “victim”? Why do you think this occurred?
For the Stanford Prison experiment:
1) How was the group of subjects split at the beginning of the experiment and what were they told?
2) What started to happen shortly after the experiment started?
3) Describe the behaviors of the “guards” and the “prisoners”.
4) What does these behaviors suggest about the concept of authority as a form of behavior control?
5) What prevented “good guards” from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards?
6) What was the response of the guards when the prisoners stated to rebel? How did the prisoners react to this?
7) How do the ethical dilemmas in this research compare with the ethical issues raised by Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments? Would it be better if these studies had never been done?
