What was the motivation behind Stanley Milgram?

Answer 1

Stanley Milgram wanted to observe the influence of obedience on people. First off, obedience is changing one's behavior in response to an authority figure. An authority figure is someone who has social influence and power, such as a teacher or work manager. Milgram was curious to see how far people would go in obeying the authorities and what factors influenced obedience upon them. The incidences with Nazi Germany sparked the study of obedience among many researchers and especially Stanley Milgram. During the Nazi area, the Nazi soldiers committed many cruel acts, such as gassing the Jews and executing innocent lives. Were these soldiers naturally cruel and heartless or were they simply following orders?

Milgram set out to discover the answers to these questions. This set the stage for one of the most famous experiments in psychology. In the experiment, he assigned participants two main roles, one administering electrical shocks (the "teacher") and another was given a simple memory test (the "learner"). If the learner received a wrong answer, he would be given a shock by the teacher instructed to do so by Milgram himself. The more the learner got wrong, the more powerful the shock each time. In the end, in the presence of an authority figure, Stanley Milgram, 65% of the teachers would go all the way to the highest volt shock. This shows how much influence the presence of a higher authority can have on people.

Answer 2

Stanley Milgram was motivated by a desire to understand obedience to authority and the willingness of individuals to obey orders that conflicted with their personal conscience. He sought to explore the factors that influence people to obey destructive commands, particularly in the context of authoritarian regimes and oppressive systems. His infamous obedience experiments in the 1960s aimed to shed light on human behavior in hierarchical power structures.

Answer 3

The motivation behind Milgram's experiments was the Holocaust, and specifically the neuremberg trials that came after. One of the NAZIs, Adolf Eichman, said they were just following orders. Indeed, they didn't appear to be an "evil" person, and this intrigued Milgram. He called it the "banality of evil" and wanted to find out how prone normal people were to committing immoral acts simply because they were ordered to do so.