Milgram`s Research on Obedience

Milgram and the Nazis (Evaluating David 's Answer Using Milgram 's Research on Obedience

From the point of view of David who was unable to see the various available texts attempting to explain the atrocities of the holocaust it may truly appear to him as if Germans had developed sadistic twisted , abnormal personalities . He was an uninformed boy , if we would discuss to him the experiment of Milgram on obedience , perhaps it could open his mind a bit about the different factors that could have influenced the Germans to act in compliance the

way they did in WWII

It is the case that Milgram conducted his research on obedience as a result of his own attempt to try and answer the cause of mayhem during the holocaust , at least to the extent that people complied to participate in such acts as merely following their s . It appears that through the controversial Milgram experiments , Germans would have a warranted defense of merely being compliant to instructions being given out by an authority . Milgram himself did not want to make it look as if the Nazis , including Germans who aided in execution of Jews in World War Two were merely being obedient he accepts the fact that there was an anti-Semite ideological indoctrination in play as well

Milgram 's experiment included an accomplice participant in the form of the learner , a typically Norman person randomly invited and always gets to become the teacher , and Milgram 's assistant as the experimenter . The teacher is tasked to teach the learner and whenever the latter makes a mistake he is to be administered with an electric shock that ranged from low to dangerous levels . Every time the learner commits an error , the voltage would be increased , during such increase , the learner would demonstrate suffering from pain , on later forms of the experiment , even mentioning a heart condition , pleading for the whole thing to stop (all pretend . One would think that the teachers would refuse at the onset of hearing the learner being harmed and wanting to quit . However , with the right amount of push , and command of the experimenter , 65 of the participants continued with the experiment up to the very last voltage range

Milgram 's study though was seen to be somewhat unethical , proved to be a legitimate way of explaining the pressure and high degree of compliance to a perceived higher authority . This would easily debunk the answer of David , in such a way that we could not simply assume that Germans have become or were evil people who complied because they were sadistic . Rather it is the better explanation to see that participants from everyday walks of life can act to commit evil things under certain conditions as a way of complying to s . In a sense that what happened during the Holocaust was not committed by monsters in the form of Germans , but rather by people who were ed to act out the wishes of a monstrous authority in form of...