Stanley Miligram

Stanley milligram (August 15 1933 to December 20, 1984) was an American Social psychologist. He was best known for his controversial experiment on obedience that was conducted in the year 1960s during his professorship at Yale. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents. His parents were Adele and Samuel Miligram (1898 to 1953). His parents had emigrated to the United States from Romania and Hungary respectively at the time of the World War I.

The events in the Holocaust really influenced Stanley Milligram, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann in the development of the experiment which is called the Miligram Experiment.

Miligram Experiment

Milligram Experiment was known as the series of social psychology experiments that was conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Miligram. They estimated the willingness of study participants, men from a varied range of occupations with diverse levels of educations to obey an authority figure who instructed them in the performance of acts conflicting with their personal conscience. The participants were led to believe that they were assisting an experiment that not related to the genre. In the experiment they had to administer electric shock to a learner. These electric shocks which were not real, but were fake gradually increased to the levels that would have been fatal, if they had been real. The unexpected results of the experiments were that, a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey the instructions. The first description of his research in a 1963 article in the Journal of Abnormal and social psychologies. His findings were later discussed in greater details in his 1974 book, which was named Obedience to Authority. The initiations of the experiments were in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly Chittenden Hall at Yale University, three months after the initiation of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Miligram devised his psychological study in order to answer to the popular contemporary question, “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?” “Could they be called accomplices?” the experiment was conducted once again in various parts of the world with fairly consistent outcomes.

The most significant about this experiment was that this experiment was conducted in four variations. In overall basis each variation of the experiment involved the basic test. There were “teachers” who were told that the effect of the penalisation or the ability to learn were being tested. “Learners” or subjects of the tests were to be shocked when they have an answer which is incorrect answer to a question. “Teachers” were told to treat silence as an incorrect response. With each incorrect response the degree of shock administered was to increase on the basis of the set of the levers that were ranging from 75 volts or minimal shock to 450 volts. With each variation in the experiment the independent and dependent variables changed slightly as the experiment varied.

Experiment Variation I

Independent variable: rebellious interveners (This variation tested rather introducing people who questioned authority, changed the obedience of others.)

Test: Respondents were said to keep together in a room and some individuals who fit in the category of rebellious or questions authority were kept amongst a group of average responders. The test would see that how many people would be follow the rebellion and not adhere to the experiment.

Experiment Variation II

Independent variable: this variation tested rather introducing people who interrogated the authority would change the obedience of others.

Test: the responders were kept in a room and some individuals who were fitting in the category were kept amongst the group of average responders. The test was to see how many people could follow the rebellion and not adhere to the experiment.

Experiment Variation III

Independent variable: this test was conducted for the purpose to test the obedience level of the individual.

Test: respondents were kept in a room with the person who is learning they could not see the authority and were forced to place the learner’s hand on the plate of the shock and to administer the shock.

Experiment Variation IV

Independent variable: this test was conducted for the purpose to test how the idea of the responder change the level of obedience.

Test: the responders were paired with lesser authorities and told to administer shocks to the learner, where the learner could two in number, the lab tech and the responder.

Moral Compass

Moral compass refers to the inner sense which differentiates what is right from what is wrong. It functions as a guide, just like the needle of a compass, for the purpose of a morally appropriate behaviour. It can be a person belief or a system which serves as a guide for morally appropriate behaviour. It can be defined as the full range of virtues, vices or actions that may influence others and that are available as alternatives to a person to a group or to people generally.

How personal values are transformed into ethical business decisions?

A huge section of different ethical experiments deal with the approach or source or source of the principle or the standards that are to be used for the purpose of decision making in the field of business. To confine ethical decision making to a group of business context decisions on the ethics are necessarily limited to the actions and the words. A right behaviour can be evaluated on the basis of the actions and words by the concerned individuals. A person’s ethics is judged by the words he speaks out and the way he deals with the people who are subordinate to him. The addressing of the ethics in the making of decisions in business or the other large organisations do point to the requirement to make sure the key decisions that need focus have been made clear and are place. There are some criteria, that can be used for the judgement of the appropriate ethical considerations, such as compliance, building of reputation, responsibility, promotion of good and reduction in the harm of the other workers in the area of the business.