Personality and The Milgram Experiment

Society gives preference to some personalities over others.  It expects everyone to excel in studies, have high resilience, be a good parent, have stable mental health,  live a stress-free / aggression-free life, etc. Traits that are acknowledged and praised by people are more likely to make you engage in socially unacceptable behaviors if you are told to do so. Stanley Milgram attempted to decide whether  Adolf Eichmann, got involved in the horrendous deeds of the holocaust because of his complete and unconditional compliance to his higher authority. Milgram who also thought it could be due to the internal thoughts later agreed to speed up the change from internal behavioral justifications to environmental and situational variables and regarded personality as an essential indicator of change in obedient behavior (Benjamin & Simpson, 2009). His focus shifted towards the authoritarian figures and how they impact people. This study shows how obedience in a Milgram-like experiment is predicted by one's personality. He carried out his research with the help of tv shows. The research was mainly done to check the connection between personality traits such as agreeableness and conscientiousness with an obedience which are the two primary traits that display behavioral receptivity to normative expectations. Agreeableness is one of the 5 big personality traits. An individual who scores high in agreeableness is known to be very friendly and empathetic. While those who scoreless on the scale are known to have a reserved and antisocial personality. Consciousness is being aware of one's thoughts, emotions, actions, feelings, and the people around you. Consciousness is something that changes spontaneously. For instance, you might be thinking about how good the weather is or about how crumpled your shirt is. And then it might shift to the book that you purchased recently or preparing breakfast for your children. 

For his experiment, he asked 66  contestants in the age group 26-54 to take part in a tv show. they were also paid a fee of  4 dollars . all were informed that the study was about learning and the effects of punishment on learning. they were to draw straws which had the role of contestants learner or the teacher) in it. what they didn't know was that their roles were already predetermined. it was a fixed lottery. the experiment involved 3 people -a learner (volunteer /actor ), a teacher (naive participant ), and the examiner with the gray coat as the authority figure .the learner was strapped to the chair in a separate room while the teacher and the examiner were in a different room. the teacher had to ask the learner questions related to word pairs and he was told that for every mistake the learner made, he would be given the shock and the voltage must be increased further. if contestants were asked about the shock they were answered: 'there is no permanent tissue damage '. learner deliberately makes mistakes in repeating the words the teachers read. and the teacher gives a shock with each wrong answer. if the contestants hesitated or did not obey, they were told  the 4 prods in the same order1.' please continue '2.'the experiment requires that you continue '3.'it is essential that you continue'4.' you have no other choice but to go on '