心理学Essay要求：Milgram and Zimbardo's Experiments on Obedience and Compliance

本文是心理学专业的Essay范例，题目是“Milgram and Zimbardo's Experiments on Obedience and Compliance（米尔格拉姆和津巴多关于服从和服从的实验）”，米尔格拉姆服从实验，又称服从权威研究，是社会心理学中非常著名的科学实验。

实验的概念在1963年耶鲁大学心理学家斯坦利·米尔格拉姆在《反常与社会心理学杂志》上发表的《服从的行为研究》中首次讨论，后来在1974年发表的《服从权威:一种实验观点》中也首次讨论。这个实验的目的是测试人类本性的力量来抵抗一个权威的权威，这个权威违背他们的良心发出命令。这个实验被认为是一个典型的服从实验，在社会心理学圈有很强的反响。

The Milgram Obedience experiment, which is also known as the Obedience to Authority Study, is a very well known scientific experiment in social psychology. The concept of the experiment was first discussed in 1963 in the Behavioral Study of Obedience in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology by Yale university psychologist Stanley Milgram and later in his 1974 publication Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. The purpose of this experiment is to test the power of human nature to resist the authority of an authority who gives an order against their conscience. This experiment was regarded as a typical one about the obedience experiment, and it had strong repercussions in the social psychology circle.

The following is some basic processes of the experiment:Milgram first advertised in the newspaper for participants and paid them $4.50 for each trial. Forty people, ranging in age from 25 to 50, were recruited to take part in the experiment. They were told they would take part in an experiment to study the effects of punishment on students’ learning. In the experiment, two people were paired, one as a student and one as a teacher. Who shall be the student and who shall be the teacher shall be determined by lot. The teacher’s task is to read the paired related words. The students must remember the words. Then the student need to choose the correct answer from four opinions after teacher presents a word. If the choice is wrong, the teacher pushes the button and gives the students an electric shock as punishment.

下面是实验的一些基本过程:米尔格拉姆首先在报纸上登广告招募参与者，每次试验支付他们4.5美元。研究人员招募了40名年龄在25岁到50岁之间的人参加这项实验。他们被告知，他们将参加一项实验，研究惩罚对学生学习的影响。在这个实验中，两个人被配对，一个是学生，一个是老师。谁是学生，谁是老师将由抽签决定。教师的任务是阅读配对的相关单词。学生必须记住单词。在老师给出一个单词后，学生需要从四个观点中选择正确的答案。如果选择错误，老师就按下按钮，并对学生进行电击作为惩罚。

Due to prior arrangement, each group actually had only one participant, and the other was an assistant of the experiment. As a result, the participants were always teachers and the assistants were always students. At the beginning of the experiment, an assistant and a participant were placed in two rooms separated by a wall. Electrodes were attached to the students’ arms so that they could be given an electric shock if they made a bad choice. Moreover, the experimenter strapped the “student” to a chair, explaining to the “teacher” that it was to prevent him from escaping. “Teacher” and “student” cannot see each other directly, they use the telecommunication transmission way to keep in touch. There were buttons on a total of 30, imposing electric penalties are marked on the each button it controlled by the voltage, starting from 15 volts, increased to 450 volts in turn. In fact, no shock was actually implemented, in the next room, the experimenter turned on a tape recorder, which played a pre recorded scream paired with the action of a generator. However, to make the participants convinced, they first received a 45-volt electric shock as an experience. Although the experimenter said the shock was mild, it was too much for the participants to bear.

由于事先安排，实际上每组只有一名被试，另一名被试是实验的助手。因此，参与者总是老师，助手总是学生。在实验开始时，一名助手和一名被试被安排在两间用墙隔开的房间里。电极被绑在学生的手臂上，如果他们做出了错误的选择，他们就会受到电击。此外，实验者把“学生”绑在椅子上，向“老师”解释这是为了防止他逃跑。“老师”和“学生”不能直接看到对方，他们使用电信传输方式保持联系。上面共有30个按钮，每个按钮上都标着施加电刑的电压，由它控制，从15伏依次增加到450伏。事实上，并没有实施电击，在隔壁房间，实验者打开录音机，播放预先录制的尖叫声，伴随着发电机的动作。然而，为了让参与者相信，他们首先接受了45伏的电击作为体验。虽然实验者说电击是轻微的，但它对参与者来说是难以承受的。

During the experiment, the “student” made many mistakes intentionally. After the “teacher” pointed out his mistakes, he gave electric shock immediately. The “student” groaned repeatedly. As the voltage rises, the “student” shouts and scolds, then begs, kicks and hits the wall, and finally stops yelling, seemingly fainting. At this point, many of the participants expressed a desire to pause the experiment to check on the students. Many participants paused at 135 volts and questioned the purpose of the experiment. Some went on to take the test after receiving assurances that they were not liable. Some laughed nervously as they heard the students scream. When a participant indicated that he wanted to stop the experiment, the experimenter responded in the following order:

Please continue.

This experiment needs you to continue. Please continue.

It is necessary that you go on.

You have no choice, you must go on.

If, after four times of prompting, the participants still wanted to stop, the experiment stopped. Otherwise, the experiment will continue until the punishment voltage applied by the participants increases to the maximum 450 volts and continues for three times.

In this case, 26 participants (65% of the total) obeyed the experimenter’s order and persisted until the end of the experiment, but showed varying degrees of nervousness and anxiety. Fourteen others (35% of the total) rebelled and refused to carry out the order, saying it was cruel and immoral. After the experiment, Milgram told the truth to all the participants in order to eliminate their anxiety.

在这种情况下，26名参与者(占总数的65%)服从了实验者的命令，并一直坚持到实验结束，但表现出不同程度的紧张和焦虑。另有14人(占总数的35%)反抗并拒绝执行该命令，称这是残忍和不道德的。实验结束后，Milgram告诉所有参与者真相，以消除他们的焦虑。

Surprisingly, before the experiment, Milgram had asked his fellow psychologists to predict the outcome of the experiment, and they all agreed that only a few people — 1 in 10 or even 1 percent — would be willing to continue punishing until the maximum volt. As a result, in Milgram’s first experiment, 65 percent of the participants (more than 27 out of 40) reached the maximum 450 volts of punishment — even though they all showed discomfort. Everyone paused and questioned the experiment when the volts reached a certain level, and some even said they wanted to give their money back. None of the participants persisted in stopping before reaching 300 volts. Milgram himself and a number of psychologists around the world have since done similar or different experiments, but with similar results. Dr Thomas Blass of the university of Maryland, Baltimore county, repeated the experiment many times and came up with the result: Regardless of the time and place of the experiment, a certain percentage of participants — 61 percent to 66 percent — were willing to apply a lethal voltage to each experiment.

As Philip Zimbardo recalled, due to little awareness about the experiment, participants who didn’t reach the highest volts didn’t insist that the experiment itself should end, didn’t visit the “student” in the next room, and didn’t ask the experimenter for permission to leave.

据Philip Zimbardo回忆，由于对实验的了解很少，没有达到最高电压的参与者并不坚持实验本身应该结束，没有去拜访隔壁房间的“学生”，也没有请求实验者允许离开。

Milgram stated in his article The Perils of Obedience (1974) that the legal and philosophical views of obedience are very significant, but they say little about the actions people take when confronted with practical situations. He designed this experiment at Yale university to test an ordinary citizen’s willingness to inflict much or little pain on another human being just because of the orders given by a scientist assisting the experiment. When the authority that led the experiment ordered the participant to harm another person, even more so than the screams of pain the participant had heard, the authority continued to order the participant most of the time, even though the participant was so morally disturbed. Experiments have shown how willing adults are to submit to almost any measure of power, and we must study and explain this phenomenon as soon as possible.

Milgram在他的文章《服从的危险》(1974)中指出，服从的法律和哲学观点是非常重要的，但它们很少提到人们在面对实际情况时所采取的行动。他在耶鲁大学设计了这个实验，以测试一个普通公民是否愿意仅仅因为一个协助实验的科学家的命令而给另一个人施加或多或少的痛苦。当领导实验的权威命令参与者去伤害另一个人，甚至比参与者听到的痛苦的尖叫更强烈时，权威在大多数时间里继续命令参与者，即使参与者在道德上被扰乱了。实验已经表明，成年人是多么愿意屈从于几乎任何衡量权力的标准，我们必须尽快研究和解释这一现象。

The experiment itself has raised ethical questions about the science of the experiment, which puts extreme emotional pressure on participants. Although the experiment led to valuable discoveries in human psychology, many scientists today would consider such experiments unethical. A later survey found that 84% of the participants at the time said they felt “happy” or “very happy” to have taken part in the experiment, that 15% of the participants chose to be neutral (92% of the participants did the post-survey), and many of them later thanked Milgram. And Milgram kept getting calls from former participants who wanted to help him with his experiments again, or even to join his research team. However, the experience of the experiment did not change every participant for life. Many participants were not told the details based on modern experimental standards, and exit interviews showed that many participants still did not seem to understand what was going on. The main criticism of experiments is not the ethical controversy of their methods, but the significance they represent. A participant from Yale university in 1961 wrote in the magazine of the Jewish Currents: when he wanted to stop in the middle of as a “teacher”, is a suspect to “the whole experiment may be just designed, in order to test an ordinary americans will follow orders against conscience – like Germany during the Nazi period” and this is one of the purpose of the experiment. Milgram, in his book The Perils of Obedience (1974), said, “the question we face is how the conditions we create in the laboratory to bring people to power are related to the Nazi era that we deplored.”

An ordinary person, just to get his work done, without any personal malice or enmity, can actually be a tool for a horrific process of destruction. Moreover, when their work makes the destruction process obvious, when the tasks they are asked to perform do not conform to their own moral values, most people are unable to resist the orders of leaders.

一个普通人，只是为了完成他的工作，没有任何个人恶意或敌意，实际上可以成为一个可怕的破坏过程的工具。此外，当他们的工作使破坏过程变得明显时，当他们被要求执行的任务不符合他们自己的道德价值观时，大多数人无法抗拒领导的命令。

On the basis of the first experiment, Milgram further discusses what factors are involved in the generation of obedience behavior. He explored the manipulation of experimental conditions from the subjective and objective dimensions of obedience. The objective conditions of Milgram’s operation include many.

Firstly, it is the distance between “teacher” and “student”: The distance between teachers and students is divided into four grades, with 40 participants participating in each grade. After analysing the data, the result shows that the closer the “student” is to “teacher”, the more the participant refuses to obey, and the farther the distance is, the easier the participant is to obey. Secondly, it is the relationship between the experimenter and the participant. The relationship was divided into three situations: the experimenter and the participant were face to face together; the experimenter left after explaining the task and kept in touch with the participant by telephone; the experimenter was not present, and all instructions were played by a tape recorder. The results showed that in the first case, the participants obeyed three times more than in the other cases. Thirdly, it is the status of the experimenter. The results showed that the higher the status of the experimenters, the higher the number of the “students” who were tested with the strongest electric shock.

首先是“老师”与“学生”之间的距离:教师与学生之间的距离分为四个年级，每个年级有40名参与者参与。通过对数据的分析，结果表明，“学生”与“老师”越近，参与者越拒绝服从，距离越远，参与者越容易服从。其次，它是实验者和被试之间的关系。这种关系被分为三种情况:实验者和被试面对面;实验者在解释完任务后离开，并通过电话与参与者保持联系;实验人员不在场，所有的指令都由录音机播放。结果显示，在第一种情况下，参与者服从的次数是其他情况的三倍。第三，是实验者的地位。结果表明，实验者的地位越高，接受最强电击测试的“学生”数量就越多。

In addition, there are many factors affecting obedience, which can be summarised into three aspects:

the sender of the order. His authority, whether he supervises the execution of orders, affects obedience.

the executor of a command. His moral level, personality characteristics and cultural background will also affect his obedience to orders.

situational factors. For example, whether someone supports his refusal behavior, what is the example behavior of those around him, how is the reward structure set, how is the feedback of his refusal or execution of orders, etc., will also affect the individual’s obedience behavior.

In conclusion, just like some social psychologists believe that there are two main reasons why individuals obey behaviors. The first is legal power. We usually think that in certain situations, society has given certain social roles more power, and it is our duty to obey them. For example, students should obey teachers, patients should obey doctors, etc. In the laboratory, participants should obey the experimenter, especially the unfamiliar situation strengthens the participants’ readiness to obey the orders of the experimenter. The second is the transfer of responsibility. In general, we have our own sense of responsibility for our own behavior, but if we think that the responsibility for a certain behavior is not our own, especially when a commander takes the initiative to take responsibility, we will think that the leader of the behavior is not our own, but the commander. Therefore, we don’t have to be responsible for this behavior, so there’s a transfer of responsibility, and people don’t think about the consequences of their behavior.

总之，就像一些社会心理学家认为，有两个主要原因为什么个体服从行为。首先是法律权力。我们通常认为，在某些情况下，社会赋予了某些社会角色更多的权力，我们有责任遵守这些角色。例如，学生应该服从老师，病人应该服从医生，等等。在实验室中，被试应服从实验者，特别是在不熟悉的情境中，增强了被试服从实验者命令的意愿。第二是责任的转移。一般来说,我们有自己的责任感对我们自己的行为,但是,如果我们认为某种行为的责任不是我们自己的,特别是当指挥官主动承担责任的时候,我们会认为,领导者的行为不是我们自己的,但指挥官。因此，我们不必为这种行为负责，所以有一种责任转移，人们不会考虑他们行为的后果。

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