The Milgram Experiment

"The Milgram Experiment" 1961 by Social Psychologist, Stanley Milgram is a scientific study of human behavior. The study measures the willingness of participants to obey people in authority who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their own personal conscience. Twelve volunteers were selected and they were informed that the experiment was a memory test, after which the actual participants were introduced to an actor (as another volunteer). The Learner was given a list of multiple choice questions to review that the teacher will ask questions from. The teacher was then taken into another room, where he/she is shown the generator that will shock the learner if he gives an incorrect answer, and for every wrong answer the voltage will be increased from 15 up to 450 volts. 

Three of the twelve actual participants refuse to perlong with the experiment because they thought it was very scary, stressful and inhuman to be perform such cruel act on a human being after the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would stop.  

Whenever the teacher indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:

1.     Please continue.

2.     The experiment requires that you continue.

3.     It is absolutely essential that you continue.

4.     You have no other choice, you must go on.

The experimenter (E) orders the teacher (T); the subject of the experiment, to give what the subject (teacher) believes are painful electric shocks to a learner (L), who is actually an actor and confederate. The subject believes that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual electric shocks, however in reality there were no such punishments. Being separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder joined with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level.

What I have concluded from both "The Five Faces of Oppression" and "The Milgram Experiment" is that they are both based on the matter of POWER, OBEDIENCE, DEVIANCE AND ORDER. We are obedient in following instruction from people in authority in any institution such as the family, school, church, government etc. and as bear consequences in any group, people tend to use social mechanism such as ridicule, gossip, opprobrium as a mean of punishment  for violating the social norms, rather than using physical violence which is the oldest method that have been used for decades to restore formality  

I remember growing up, my mother being the breadwinner of the household and a single-parent, I had to obey her every rules, and if I am disobedient she would use ridicule as a mean of causing embarrassment to me. Like one night i was down the street with my friends chit chatting and the lights went out, and even though i knew i should have make an attempt to find my way home to avoid any potential threat, i insist on staying to chat with them, little after I felt someone grab me from behind and start hitting me, when turn around it was my mother saying "likkle gal yuh nuh see light gone and you  pon di road like you a boy pickney and man can tek yuh wey and rape yuh. Go inna di yaad before me embarrass you out yah!" Little she knew I was already feeling that way because my friends were all laughing at me and for days I refused to see them. But, now I understand the true meaning of what mom was try to tell me. Now I realize the importance of social control, because if she had not put her feet down firmly on the ground and raise me in the right way I might have ended up elsewhere.