Talk:Milgram experiment/Archive 1

message: On 30 August 2001, the very first organized collaboration to improve an article was started: a short "article-a-day" e-mail on the Milgram experiment sent during a simpler time when only 145 people had user pages.  Thus this article was the very first precursor to the Collaboration of the week.
Source: Announcements August 2001Eric Herboso  04:58, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Collaboration 

message: From the article:
:As a hair-splitting aside it must be noted that the shocks 'inflicted' are in essense unitless. The experimenters claim that 450-volts is fatal is not entirely true (see electric shock). Without being told amperes the actual physiological effect cannot be determined. Therefore what the experiment reveals is the power of subjective belief over an ignorance of physics. Did no subject ask about the current?
Let's put it this way. 450 V is potentially fatal (in real life, much less will do the job), and the "experimental equipment" was marked with the word DANGER at that voltage. The question is: did the experimental subjects believe they were causing great pain or death? The answer is yes. The Anome 19:16 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)
::Moreover, in many experiments, the "victim" was supposed to scream, beg, plead, and eventually appear to pass out. --Andrew 09:45, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
:::This point seems quite critical to me.  The key point, as I understand it was that the "learner" apparently passed out or died.  In fact, the switches controlling the shocks were labeled as "Dangerous" or "XXX" in at least one of Milgram's experiments.  Knowing that the "teachers" believed they were not only giving painful shocks but also had the potential to "kill" the "learner" seems essential to understand why they expected only sadists to continue through to the end.  --Abqwildcat 00:49, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, personally.  A while ago I gave the Methods section a rewrite which explicated the nature of the electric shocks and why the "learner" was reacting the way he did, but it got reverted.  Maybe someone else should give it a try.  Marblespire 06:20, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Did they believe they were causing pain?

message: There is a note on WP:FAC that this article could use a picture. Would the sign from Electric shock do? -- Solipsist 06:25, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've only seen that sign once, in London, but it made me laugh very hard.  I don't really think that it goes along with this article all that well, especially considering no-one is actually shocked.  Acegikmo1 14:52, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture 

message: Is there any reason that this article is being considered for removal?  I think there's lots of promise in it, and if it was previously "up to snuff" so to speak, it shouldn't be hard to get it back to featured article quality.
I think just some constructive criticism along with a removal consideration would be useful.  Anyone?
--ABQCat 04:41, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The person who put {farc} here has done a sloppy job of it by failing mention why. I'd give it 48 hours, and if no comment surfaces, just remove it. The article looks good to me. (A little thin in certain areas, but stll FAC-quality.) --Yath 04:21, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Maybe because 1974 is when Milgram published the book "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View" which describes the experiment and all its variations in detail, as well as Milgram's theories and interpretations about it. "summarized" is really the wrong word and I think I'll change it. DanielCristofani 03:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  featured article removal candidate 

message: I think the sugestion of a "Parallel between the Experimenter and the Participant" is not accurate. The experimenter does not blindly submit to the "science" authority, but conciously weighs the advantages and disadvantages of performing the experiment. The way I see it, The whole point of the experiment is that, when ordered to do so, people do things they wouldn't if they decided uninfluenced.
If anyone has any reason not to delete it, please tell me. --Waltervulej 02:19, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing "Parallel between the Experimenter and the Participant" 

message: 83.118.18.78 made an edit at 12:27 UTC changing "In the variation where immediacy of the "learner" was closest, participants had to physically hold the learner's arm onto a shock plate, which decreased compliance " to read "...increased compliance".  As I understand it, the more immediate the interaction, the lower the compliance (of the participant and unwitting subject--remember the "learner" was not the real subject of the experiment and his compliance or otherwise was a fake). I have reverted. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 13:11, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation of [[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]'s revert of an edit by [[User:83.118.18.78|83.118.18.78]]

message: I suppressed the reference about "Mon oncle d'Amérique". The experiment made in the film is about stress and inhibition. --Geremy78 15:53, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mon oncle d'Amérique 

message: The section "Method of the experiment" starts in past tense (describing how people were recruited) and then continues in present tense.  It should all be in one tense, but I do not know if past or present is appropriate.  I suspect past tense, as it all is completed, but sometimes when describing experiments present tense is used.  
--zandperl 23:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tense in "Method of the experiment" 

message: I'm just throwing this question out there: have there been any accusations made that Milgram falsified his results? I've been searching online but haven't found any confirmation of this. 
--Alexxx1 04:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Falsification of results

message: I couldn't find any indication in the 1963 article of screaming or tape recorded feedback. The article has a section on the feedback of the student which describes the banging and non-responsiveness, but nowhere in the article did I encounter any mention of screaming. Hence I removed the references from the Wikipedia section... However, I see that Milward in the quote at the begining of the Wikipedia article talks about screaming victims, so I don't quite know what to make of that. Were the victims screaming in the original experiment? The original article suggests not, but I guess I'm really not sure. Feel free to revert if you know more about this than I do.JJM 00:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In the first pilot studies, they tinkered with the feedback from the victim, strengthening it until they got measurable levels of disobedience, and it was during this time that they started using tape-recorded protests and screams. After that, Milgram did a lot of variations on the experiment, trying to figure out what conditions would produce obedience or disobedience. The wall-banging version comes from the earliest set of variants, which involved different degrees of proximity between the "teacher" and "learner": one where the learner banged on the wall; the standard version where the learner could be heard protesting and screaming; a version where the learner is there in the same room, protesting and screaming; and a version where the teacher actually had to push the learner's hand down onto the shock plate. Obedience tended to decrease with proximity, with only 30% of subjects being willing to shock the learner clear to the end when they had to push his hand down. DanielCristofani 03:11, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Screaming

message: There has been a move to replace "subject" with "teacher" throughout the section "Method of the experiment". This comes from a desire for consistency, but I believe it is a bad move. "Teacher" and "learner" are roles in the fictitious "experiment on the effects of punishment on learning", not in Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority. It is a subtle judgement call, but I think it is appropriate to use the words "teacher" and "learner" when the focus is on the fictional setting, and the words "subject" and "confederate" when the focus is on what is really happening.
(About "subject" vs. "participant", the APA style FAQ referenced above says "Subjects is perfectly appropriate when the person cannot him- or herself provide informed consent." This is arguably true of Milgram's experiment, and I say this as someone who thinks the experiment was a great idea.) DanielCristofani 05:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "teacher" vs "subject". 

message: anyone see that there is a section missing - the predictors of defiance?  For instance, I know that Lawrence Kohlberg showed that principled levels of moral development were one of the only predictors that someone would stop early.  There were a couple of others too.  Anyone? JoeSmack Talk 14:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  predictors of defiance to the experiment? 

message: I once heard about a related experiment that Milgram later conducted.  As the first phase, Milgram solicited applications from students for a fictitious award.  Each application was to include an essay about altruism.  After some time, Milgram invited each test subject (applicant) to an interview.  Upon arriving at the office on campus designated for the interview, the subject found a makeshift sign indicating that the location had been moved to another building, at the opposite side of the campus.  The subject then rushed to the new location.  That was all intended to set up the subject for what happened next.
Milgram placed an actor on the route from the first interview location to the second.  As each subject passed by, the actor feigned a heart attack or some other life-threatening affliction.  The object of the experiment was to see how many of the subjects would, upon arriving to their destination, mention the stricken person encountered along the way.  Few of them did.
Does anyone here know anything else about this experiment? --Smack (talk) 03:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I recall seeing this supposed experiment attributed to a nameless professor of religion, and it seems strongly influenced by the story of the Good Samaritan. That doesn't prove anything, but it makes me suspect that it's an urban legend. —Eric S. Smith 13:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another experiment 

message: The Reactions section is unsourced and seems like one editors opinion on the significance of the experiment. All analyses of the experiment require sourced. I'll start chopping the section if no-one improves it soon. Ashmoo 04:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reactions: Unsourced & OR

message: From: Forsyth, Donelson R. (2006) Group Dynamics Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education
Page 256-257
Milgram's results sparked controversies that are unresolved even today (Blass, 2000; A. G. Miller, & Brief, 1995). Some researchers believe that the participants were not taken in by Milgram's subterfuge; they knew that no shocks were being administered, but they played along so as not to ruin the study. (Mixon, 1977; Orne & Holland, 1968). Milgram's research team, however, carefully interview all the participants, and fewer than 20% challenged the reality of the situation (Elms, 1995). Moreover, if participants saw through the elaborate duplicity, then why did they become so upset?
:...
The distress of the participants was so great that the publication of the study sparked a controversy over the ethics of social-psychological research (A. G. Miller, 1995). Even a museum exhibit that featured the Milgram experiment sparked public debate over its ethics when it toured the U.S. science museums (C.Marsh, 2000)
--84.48.194.249 17:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have the Forsyth book, can you list full citation details on the sources it relies on, so they can (hopefully) be located on PubMed or elsewhere?  Sandy 17:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversies 

message: In the first paragraph, there are 4 terms used to describe what seems like 3 participants in the experiment.  Confederate(which means an accomplice), experimenter, victim and participant.  Can someone confirm that the victim (an irish-american accoutant that acted the role as the victim) is the confederate?  It is quite confusing beacuse it makes it seem as if the confederate and the victim are 2 different people.  Can anyone make this more user-friendly?
On another note I think the diagram should be in the section "method of the experiment" rather than in the introduction.  Tremello22 20:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My thoughts 

message: Milgram found that
:Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. 
Jewish people in WWII Germany heard rumors of the Holocaust but couldn't believe their fellow human beings could commit the crime of genocide. They had no idea people could be so cruel.
Milgram discovered that people can be cruel, even when not forced to be. Imagine how much more cruel we can be made to be, when we ourselves are threatened with torture or death.
I don't think this excuse Eichmann or the Nazis. It shows, rather, how far the human race has yet to go, if we are to rise above the moral level of predatory animals. --Uncle Ed 18:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why Germans obeyed orders to murder Jews and others