Write an essay about both the chapter 2 Stanley Milgram obedience experiment and the book Seductive Poison:A Jonestown Survivor story by Deborah Layton . As Lauren Slater points out, social psychologists often focus on the importance of place over personality; Milgram hypothesized that humans cannot predict their reactions to any given scenario accurately, so he opted to actually place his subjects in a realistic situation to observe how willing they were to follow the orders of an authority figure when those orders appear to be immoral or unethical. In this essay, you will introduce your audience to Milgram, his experiment and his findings; you will also draw connections between Milgram’s experiment and the Peoples Temple tragedy. You will utilize information/quoted material from the following readings: chapter 2 of Lauren Slater’s Opening Skinner’s Box and Deborah Layton’s Seductive Poison. Remember, this essay (and your thesis) should be based on your opinion, and your quoted/paraphrased material should serve to support your ideas.

Your Narrative Introduction paragraph will engage the audience by providing a brief personal story, one in which you were asked by another person to do something you knew to be improper; after briefly explaining what happened, you will briefly introduce Milgram’s theory on why people follow such orders, then provide your thesis statement, which should explain how Jones used this technique on his own followers. Your Body paragraphs will begin with background information on Stanley Milgram, an understanding of how the experiment was conducted, and specifically Milgram’s findings/conclusions; then, you will introduce the audience to at least two examples from Seductive Poison, focusing in each on the parallels between those examples and Milgram’s experiment (authority figure, those tasked with following orders, and those who would be acted upon or affected). Finally, you will compare/contrast your examples in order to comment on the relevance of Milgram’s findings over time. In this essay, you are required to utilize quoted material from both sources that help you to support your thesis. Remember, quoted and paraphrased material should support your ideas and must be introduced and explained, and all must be cited properly according to MLA