The Visual Cliff Analysis

The article that I read was “The Visual Cliff,” by Eleanor J. Gibson and Richard D. Walk. Based on what I read in the article, the intent of the paper was to investigate depth perception in babies, and in animals. The authors thought that a child would have common sense if they are places on a piece of glass that would have a depth to it, they would be able to notice the depth that is created. The hypothesis of this was to see if children and animals know depth perception. Depth perception can be described on how someone determines the distance of an area. It also states in the article that height perception is how the animal or child is able to determine the height of something. The authors wondered if an animal and child were born with this …show more content…
The topic that was mentioned in the paper was about obedience because in the article, it talks about how people do things just because someone who has authority would say to even if it is a good thing or bad thing. According to the article, “Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose.” It states specific examples in the article about how there were many things done because of someone telling another person to do it. For example, there was gas chambers that were built just because someone said to do it. The assumption that Milgram makes is that obedience is something that is ingrained in everyone’s behavior, and it can make a person go against their ethics and right …show more content…
The person who would tell someone to shock the victim was a high school biology teacher, and the victim of the schok was an accountant. The teacher looked like he was a scientist, or someone important, by the coat that he worn. The highest one was labeled sever shock and the lowest one was labeled slight shock. The experiment composed of 40 males, which were going to be the teachers, and the others to be the learners. It states in the article that the teacher and learner would go into different rooms that were next to each other, and the learner was put in a chair that was suppose to represent an electric chair. The teacher would press a button on the shock generator, and a light would represent the shock that he was giving. The learner is suppose to respond with the right answer to a question that is asked, and if they dont, they are shocked. As the learner misses more, the shocks became higher in voltage. The teacher then would announce the amount of voltage they are about to shock the learner with. They did this to make the teacher think about what they were doing. According to the article, the shocks got so severe that the learner would bang on the wall for the teacher to hear. The teacher was not able to stop. The point of the experiment was to see how long a person would go shocking someone even though that person is getting hurt and