The Obedience Experiment
The confidante, called Derren Brown, performs the Milgram experiment to review the level of obedience towards authority. Interestingly, the participants are businessmen and women who have no track record of criminal activities. The authoritative figure has a direct influence on the behavior of the participants.
The participants displayed machine-like behavior by blindly following the directive of switching on the electric chair, without critically evaluating any consequence of such a directive. Unfortunately, the participants are subjected to inflicted insight and emotional stress. Thus, extreme distress might have influenced their action in the shock experiment.
However, exposing the participants to extreme emotional distress raises a lot of ethical concerns since their responses could have been influenced by the inflicted insight. Besides, the participants are not briefed on the nature of the experiment and what to expect in terms of emotions. Developing personal and social competence through emotional intelligence will improve an individual’s self-efficacy.
Emotional intelligence orientation module has remained active in developing dependence of interest attached to an activity, creating proactive relationships, and monitoring their interaction with the directive of a figure associated with authority. This experiment is not representational of the conformity variable since it was conducted in a controlled environment.
Conformity Experiment
This experiment demonstrates how mankind is rarely an independent thinker. Rather, the actions are influenced by others, especially in the majority group. The experiment revolves around establishing the relationship between multiple variables such as culture, gender, task importance, and conformity.
In performing the experiment, the participant, who was a student, had seven confederates surrounding him. The progress was then measured by the reaction of the participant to the behavior of the confederates. The participant’s behavior conformed to that of the confederates who were in the majority group.
Unfortunately, the experiment depended on the lack of awareness on the side of the participant besides being run in an enclosed room. As a result, the conformity attitude might not be the same if it is done in another environment. To classify an action as of moral worthiness, the motive should be self-generated without coercion or external motivation to prove a point. Therefore, exercising personal freedom in the logic of executing a duty should be informed by authentic reasons that come from within a moral action agent.
The Good Samaritan Experiment
The Good Samaritan experiment is aimed at establishing the reaction of other people to a distress call from a stranger. Located in the urban setting, the primary participant is seen lying on the ground writhing in pain in a busy environment. Everybody passes as though they do not care about what is happening to the man in pain. In my opinion, the research experiment ignored human intuition. Human intuition is an involuntary response to real distress rather than the fake distress call in the experiment.
Besides, mankind would immediately respond to a distress situation when he or she observes the development of the distress situation. Since the experiment is located in an open street, which most people associate with homeless persons, it was obvious to confirm the research hypothesis. Most of the involuntary participants could have assumed that the man coiled on the ground is homeless.
For an action to be of moral worth, such an action is expected to achieve admirable consequences. Besides, the doing agent should get a feeling of positive accomplishment. Specifically, conformity to an individual’s duty, which forms part of moral worthiness, is accomplished through developing an intrinsic sagacity of duty. Thus, for an action to be declared as morally worthy, good intention (goodwill) should form the foundation of the intrinsic duty of an agent undertaking the action.
The experiment succeeds in displaying the biases of mankind towards others. In practically, moral worthiness of action should operate on the periphery of personal conviction, rather than being influenced by secondary factors. To classify an action as of moral worthiness, the motive should be self-generated without coercion or external motivation to prove a point.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Performed in the Stanford Prison, the experiment involved students being admitted into the prison as fake offenders and prison guards. The participant offenders began displaying distress behavior within the first week of the experiment as a result of the unbearable prison conditions.
On the other hand, the fake prison guards began displaying sadist behavior that the real guards were exercising. Although the experiment was professionally carried out, the fake offenders were not prepared psychologically for the experience inside a prison. Besides, the experiment used relatively young participants whose behavior might not connote the standard conduct in the general society.
A properly emotional intelligence pays off since an individual will learn to appreciate the essence of tolerance and need to stay active. By encouraging hyperactive tolerance levels, the individual will be able to internalize the need for optimizing output level through pre-planning of activities and accommodating extras. The participants were not trained on the best approaches to accommodating extras in the prison environment.