Research paper example
Milgram Experiment
- Subject
- Psychology
- Type
- Research paper
- Citation style
- APA 6
- Length
- 7 pages
About this sample
The paper introduces Stanley Milgram's 1963 obedience experiments at Yale and places them in the context of the Nuremberg trials and the trial of Adolf Eichmann. It then describes the experimental procedure, in which participants were pressured to deliver shocks to a learner, and the paper's reported results. It closes with the experiments' influence on social psychology and criticisms of their ethical deception and limits on withdrawal.
- Obedience to authority
- Milgram experiment procedure
- Nuremberg trials and the Holocaust
- Impact on social psychology
- Ethical criticisms of deception and withdrawal
How it opens
The Milgram Experiment was research carried out in 1963 by Yale psychologist and pioneer Stanley Milgram with the objective of investigating the boundary that exists between personal morality and compliance with authority (Braunwarth, 2014). Stanley explored rationalizations for genocidal acts that were committed by those indicted at the Nuremberg War Criminal Proceedings of World War II. Most of the accused defended their actions claiming that they were centered on obedience and were just observing the instructions given by their seniors.
These tests started in 1961, a year after Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem (Braunwarth, 2014). There were questions that Milgram was trying to answer through the experiment: 1. Was it true that Eichmann and his million co-conspirators in the Holocaust just trying to respect the order of their superiors? 2. Could all of them be referred to as accomplices?
Milgram needed to examine whether the Germans were principally submissive to authority figures because this was frequently used to justify the Nazi killings in World War II (NPR, 2013). Milgram's experiments involved multiple variants and over 700 participants that were chosen through newspaper adverts that asked for involvement in a study of scholarship at Yale University (Braunwarth, 2014).
The opening section, transcribed from the PDF. The full paper continues below.
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Using an example well
Read it for how the paper is built, not for wording to reuse: how the introduction frames the question, how each paragraph moves from a claim to evidence, and how sources are cited in APA 6. Submitting any part of it as your own work would be plagiarism, and it is written for a different brief than yours.
Writing one yourself? Read the guide How to outline a research paper and the APA format guide.