The Perils Of Obedience 'And Replicating Milgram'

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The conclusions drawn from Milgram’s experiment and Burger’s “Replicating Milgram” presents a compelling argumentation on the implication and compliance of obedience and personal morality in the presence of a figure with authority. These results are quite significant because of its theoretical and feasible application to explicate the role of obedience in a societal context, and to discuss in such instances on who should be held responsible. Through numerous examples as illustrated in Stanley Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience” and “Replicating Milgram” by Jerry M. Burger, individuals that compromise their own ethics in order to follow the orders of those with authority, should indisputably still be held accountable even if responsibility…show more content…
For example, who should have been held responsible for the harm of the learner? Should responsibility be placed under the experimenter for his or her role in persuading the teacher to continue, or does the teacher hold the same blame for continuing the study even with the option to halt at any moment? A plausible, yet valid response for this moral dilemma is that the experimenter should accept all responsibility. Proof for this assertion is demonstrated in Milgram’s detail record of the experiment in which Prozi, a study participant inquires the experimenter on the status of accountability, by which he writes, “ PROZI: You accept all responsibility? … EXPERIMENTER: The responsibility is mine. Correct. Please go on ” (Milgram 7). As clarified in the above statement, Prozi asks the experimenter on who will be liable for possible damages in the instance the learner is severely injured. Evidently, the experimenter replies that he or she will be answerable for all further actions in the study. Thus accordingly, Prozi, or any participant, is free from all any future culpability. Another perspective that is supportive of the participant’s innocently are specifically detailed in Burger’s article. As explicated in the words of Burger, “Although he obviously heard the learner’s cries and complaints, the experimenter acted as if nothing was wrong and…show more content…
For instance, as described in Burger’s “Replicating Milgram”, the notion of answerability is explicated in further detail, when he writes, “ Milgram (1974) reported that many of his participants placed responsibility for their own actions on the experimenter, taking a “just following orders” position in explaining why they continued the shocks” (Burger 4). As outlined in the following paraphrase, the findings from Milgram’s study indicates how the participants acted under their own accord. In fact, any action in the study were performed by the participant, and not the experimenter. In essence, it is party the fault of the participant to continue with the experiment, and to place the burden of responsibility when the cause of action is directly from the participant. In Milgram’s article, he further substantiates this, when he states, “The most far-reaching consequence is that the person feels responsible to the authority directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that the authority prescribes” (Milgram

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