Group Work 11/11

The Perils of Obedience 

Purpose of the study?

 The point of this experiment is to see how far a person will go when they are in a concrete and difficult situation in which he is ordered to cause pain to a victim. In the article, the subject has the right to inflict pain to the subject by using high voltage. 

Outcome of the study? 

The outcome of this study was that the people didn’t inflict pain on an individual because they wanted to obey the authority, they wanted to please them.

Opinions and Social Pressure

Purpose of the study? The purpose of this article was to determine which was more important to a person, the size of the majority or unanimity. The question that was answered was “is having a group of people unanimously choosing an obvious incorrect answered more important or ‘correct’ or is displaying individuality by disagreeing to a group of people the correct action? A group of scientists held an experiment with a number of college students, the college students were put into groups. In each group only one college student was a true subject, the other members of the group were told ahead of time to state incorrect answers in some trials. Consequently, the majority of the true subject became surprised and will eventually answer after pausing for a while, speaking in a low voice or smiling in an embarrassing way. The experiment was to measure the belief of conformity in a person.

Outcome of the study?  

Throughout the article, the guys who were not aware of the purpose of the article, constantly doubted their own beliefs. They felt pressured by the other guys giving the wrong answers to agree with them to fit in, therefore they picked the wrong answer in order to not left out. Overall, Asch wanted to show that the majority’s opinion is powerful and it will make someone go against their own beliefs. 

     Gretchen Bandt is not compassionate when it comes to the experiment because she cares more about her reputation and career. We believe this because throughout the experiment she repeatedly mentions free will and pressures the experimenter to ask the other participant for their consent to continue. The evidence that proves this statement is, “ Brandt: I’d like you to ask him. We came here from our free will. If he wants to continue. I’ll go ahead”.  Meaning that she would continue even if he has a heart condition showing that she is not compassionate of the participant. Another claim is that despite being a medical technician at Yale Medical School, she wants consent because if something was supposed to go wrong her medical license could be revoked. Brandt states “If he wants to continue, I'll go ahead”. She was consistent in finding whether or not the participant really wanted to go through with the experiment. If he was, then she would go ahead with the experiment even though she knows that the guy being shocked has a heart condition. There is a high possibility that she knows what could happen if a patient with heart conditions is given shocks. She cared more about obtaining the money than being responsible for giving shocks to a person with heart conditions without consent. As long as the person with heart condition gave her consent to inflict pain in him, she would do it despite her occupation. If she cared about the person with a heart condition, then she would have expunged herself from the experiment before getting attached to the experiment.  Overall, Brandt was not compassionate due to her reputation on the line.