Milgram experiment

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. The experiments began in July 1961, shortly after the trial of the World War II criminal Adolph Eichmann had begun. It was originally intended to explain the crimes of the Nazi era social psychology and should analyze if the Germans have a very authoritarian nature of hearing.

The experiment consisted in the fact that a "teacher"(the actual subject), a "student" (an actor) failures in the composition of word pairs each dealt a shock and an investigator (also an actor) made the statements.  Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator, with shock levels starting at 30 volts and increasing in 15-volt increments all the way up to 450 volts.  The teacher have to give a shock to the student every time an incorrect answer was produced. He believed that he was delivering real shocks to the student, but the student was a real actor who was simply pretending to be shocked. During the experiment the teacher would hear the student plead to be released or even complain about a heart condition.Once the 300-volt level had been reached, the learner banged on the wall and demanded to be released.

A terrible idea i think.......  especially for the person who has to be the teacher.
Yeah... and at the end the level of shock that the teacher was willing to deliver was used as the measure of obedience. The result was that 65% of the teachers in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks.

An extreme result I think!! 

Conclusion: The experiment showed that most teachers were prompted by the situation, to be guided by the instructions of the experimenter and not the pain of the victims. So, the presence of an authority figure dramatically increased obedience.

 

What do you think about it? Could that be?

Other psychologists argue that obedience is heavily influenced by both external and internal factors, such as personal beliefs and overall temperament. Maybe that`s the fact..... ?!