discussion psy s

Learning Goal: I’m working on a psychology discussion question and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.

part one

One of the most famous experiments on obedience was conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960’s. Milgram wanted to know why so many otherwise decent German citizens went along with the brutality of the Nazi leadership during the Holocaust. To investigate obedience, Milgram conducted a series of lab experiments to see if he could get participants to behave contrary to their own nature by simply being instructed to comply with a set of orders from an authority figure. Participants were “working-class” men of various ages and backgrounds recruited from the community surrounding Yale University.

• In the experiment, participants were required to remotely administer electric shocks to test subjects in an adjoining space, according to fairly arbitrary rules that imputed no ethical or moral significance. In other words, the participants were instructed to shock the other person just because it was part of the experiment.
• The electric shocks were not real and the test subjects were confederates (actors) that only pretending to be electrocuted.
• At the beginning of the experiment, the electrical shocks were extremely mild. As the experiment progressed, the participant was to increase the intensity of the punishing jolt incrementally toward a magnitude that implied extreme danger, perhaps even death.

Please watch the video linked below and share your thoughts on the experiment. To turn on closed captioning, click on cc in the lower right of the video.

Milgram Experiment – Big History NL, threshold 6 (Links to an external site.

part two

Watch the Ted Talk linked below. If the link below does not work, try searching the title directly on YouTube. It’s not Manipulation, It’s Strategic Communication – Keisha Brewer

https://youtu.be/QGeHS4jO0X0 (Links to an external site.)

To turn on closed captioning click on cc on the lower right of the video screen next to the settings wheel.

Journal Instructions:

Once you have watched the video, please post your journal in the text box. Your journal must include a summary of the video and a personal reflection. Include at least one solid paragraph summarizing the video (8 sentences or more) and at least one solid paragraph with a personal reflection (8 sentences or more). Your reflection should convey your thoughts and opinions on the information covered in the talk.