The Theory
Stanley Milgram was active in social psychology research during the sixties and was influenced by the events of the Second World War. He, like many others, was appalled by the Nazi Holocaust and other war atrocities and took a keen interest in the 1961 trial of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. Many of the accused war criminals during the Nuremberg War Crime trials had explained that they were 'just following orders'. Milgram wanted to discover whether people really would follow orders from an authority figure, even if they knew they could harm or even kill another person. In his experiments, one of Milgram's confederates posed as a volunteer and was strapped into a chair with electrodes attached to his body. Another (real) volunteer sitting in an adjacent room was then asked to 'administer shocks' to the first 'volunteer' when he answered questions wrongly. The voltage started low but was increased for each wrong answer given. Participants believed they were giving electric shocks, but in fact the confederate of the experimenter was merely acting, shouting in pain, banging on the table, and pleading for the experiment to stop.
At this point, many participants also asked for the experiment to be stopped when they thought they were causing pain and distress. The experimenter would then insist that they carry on, so the experiment would not be 'spoiled'. It was noted that many volunteers carried on delivering electric shocks even though they believed that the participant was being harmed. Milgram concluded that ordinary people, when faced with strong authority figures often did not have the moral resources to resist, and complied even though their actions were incompatible with their personal ethics. Clearly, such experiments would be forbidden today on ethical grounds, as they would inflict psychological distress upon participants.
How it can be applied in education
Teachers should be aware that they may be perceived as authority figures in formal education settings. Their behaviour is not only a model toward which young people pay particular attention, teachers also need to take some care about the manner in which they ask and expect their students to comply. Thus teachers have a great deal of power which they should use wisely to encourage children to behave appropriately and conduct themselves responsibly.
Teachers should also understand that children's behaviour can be shaped by the behaviour of others around them, especially those peers who they see as leaders or who are perceived to be more authoritative. Thos involved in behaviour management in schools should take into account the influence of other, older or 'stronger' children. Children who misbehave may not be doing so willingly, but may be simply overwhelmed by the force of character of others in their peer group, or they may be simply drawn along by the crowd.
1. Anderson ACT-R Cognitive Architecture
2. Argyris Double Loop Learning
3. Bandura Social Learning Theory
4. Bruner Scaffolding Theory
5. Craik and Lockhart Levels of Processing
6. Csíkszentmihályi Flow Theory
7. Dewey Experiential Learning
8. Engeström Activity Theory
9. Ebbinghaus Learning and Forgetting Curves
10. Festinger Social Comparison Theory
11. Festinger Cognitive Dissonance Theory
12. Gardner Multiple Intelligences Theory
13. Gibson Affordances Theory
14. Gregory Visual Perception Hypothesis
15. Hase and Kenyon Heutagogy
16. Hull Drive Reduction Theory
17. Inhelder and Piaget Formal Operations Stage
18. Jung Archetypes and Synchronicity
19. Jahoda Ideal Mental Health
20. Koffka Gestalt theory
21. Köhler Insight learning
22. Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle
23. Knowles Andragogy
24. Lave Situated Learning
25. Lave and Wenger Communities of Practice
26. Maslow Hierarchy of Human Needs
27. Merizow Transformative Learning
28. Milgram Six Degrees of Separation
Photo by Deviant Art
Shocking behaviour by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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