Experimenter

Had Milgram actually gone too far or...?

            Yes, most of the students were like “well, we have seen this and know about it already.” So, what exactly did this movie, Experimenter want to tell the audiences when most of the students have already learned and known about the Milgram’s Experiment?

            Milgram’s primary intention was pretty simple which was to test whether people would obey the instructions from an authority to perform acts that might hurt the others, but it has got a lot of negative criticism and bad feedback from the ethical review board due to the deception involved in his study that was likely to cause traumatic experience or potential psychological harm. Then, after carrying out the other variations of this study, he proposed several factors that possibly affected the decisions of people whether to give high voltage electric shock to the others including the presence of authority, the professional uniform of authority, and the application of electric shock on “teachers” themselves when they refused to give it to the “learners” (McLeod, 2007).

            Apparently, the main issue of Milgram’s experiment was revolved around the ethical concerns, but since when did these “ethical concerns” ever had to be something to put into considerations when ones are making decisions? It is hard to accurately trace back the actual invention, imposition or discovery of ethics to mankind, but it is commonly believed that the existence of ethics is to forbid human beings from conducting unjustified harm to the others. It is indeed true that the practice of these ethics has been providing the society to work in an organized manner, promising human beings a constant civilization. However, on the other hand, do this so-called authority and professional have always actually behaved well and never misused their powers, or are people giving too much respect and obey to them more than people actually should?        

Isn’t it obvious that the “elephant in the room” in this movie had symbolized the reality of people not voicing out when they see an issue or a problem, alongside the phenomenon of people following the instructions of the authority despite of themselves claiming that they were not “these kind” of obedient individuals afterwards. Personally, I suppose that people are being too afraid to disobey an authority’s instruction or voice out an issue, and most importantly, to not getting themselves into any possible trouble. However, at the same time, in my opinions, it is such an irony when those respects or titles of the authority should actually be earned compared to be given as granted, especially when the authorities are not even doing their jobs right. With this being said, people always do have their rights to stop from doing anything that goes against their will; obedience is not the only option.

Just trying to look back what kind of life human beings have had in the past; our ancestors used to practice the concept of “only the strong ones could survive”, but later it had all evolved to should human beings follow the rules and norms set by the authority and the society. Are not we as human beings have been living a life that has becoming with too many restrictions gradually?

If I were given the chance to conduct a social experiment without the restriction of money, resources and possibly ethical concerns, I would definitely want to find out that how people are going to respond to injustice in life because the current system of society does not really justify how things should work; laws and regulations no longer appear to be fair and square to everyone. And, most of the authorities or the wealthy ones tend to misuse their powers to gain themselves unjustified benefits, with the likelihood to harm the welfare or well-being of the others; therefore, I am interested to know whether the inner beast of human beings would do the work when people are in the situation to express their feelings of injustice towards the individuals who misuse their powers, as in physical punishment. For example, people who do corruption.

Reference

McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html