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Ethical Standards: The Milgram Experiments

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The Milgram Experiment, conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963, helped to support the idea that people will obey figures in authority, even if it means compromising their morals and/or other people’s lives. In this experiment, Milgram partnered participants with an actor to assume the roles of a “teacher” and “learner,” although these roles appeared to be randomly assigned, the actor would always assume the role as the “learner” and the participant was the “teacher.” The participants were told to test the learner’s ability to recall pairs out of 4 possible words and if the learner failed to do so, a faux shock would be administered to the learner who claimed to have a heart condition and was trained to get multiple answers wrong. Eventually, …show more content…

8.02a refers to a participant’s right to discontinue participation in an experiment. In the Milgram Experiment, the participants were denied of their right and pressured to continue with the experiment by the scientists if they initially protested. These clearly relate as the Milgram Experiment clearly denied the participants of their right given to them in the American Psychology Association Ethical Standards, thereby violating not only their specific right to discontinue service, but their overall informed consent right including a participant’s right to know any potential risks and adverse effects which cause a participant to discontinue participation. Besides 8.02a, the Milgram Experiment violated 8.07b which states that deceptions used in experiments cannot severely harm participants emotionally or physically. This experiment deceived participants into believing that they were actively harming and/or killing the learner obviously severely harmed the participants emotionally. In the documentary, the participants displayed severe distress as they protested against continuing with the experiment, but were constantly pressured by the scientist to continue with it against their

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Stanley Milgram’s 1963 Study of Disobedience was unethical, based upon scholarly research. Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) is, perhaps, best known for his research studies into disobedience, referring to a person’s following of rules (or instructions) received from an individual viewed as an authority figure. Milgram’s Study of Obedience also analyzed the effects of peer pressure. In Milgram’s study, forty males between the ages of 20 and 50, representing all types of vocations, were recruited and then reimbursed $4.50 for their participation in an alleged learning study (Holah-Psychology, n.d.). The study’s goal was to investigate what extent of obedience would be demonstrated when study participants were told by an individual perceived as an authority figure to shock another person (Holah-Psychology, n.d.) whenever the study “learner” made an error.

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The participants in the experiments actually believed they had administered painful electric shocks to another human being, and were visibly distressed throughout the experiment. Although they were not forced to stay and complete the experiment, they were consistently encouraged to keep going despite their obvious discomfort. Milgram (1974) was very careful to debrief all of the participants thoroughly, and followed up on them for some time after the experiment. Despite what many people view as a questionable ethical conduct, 83 % of the participants indicated that they were glad they had taken part in the

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Stanley Milgram’s All I can say to these experiments is “Wow” to me I saw it as inhumane. The interviews confirmed that an everyday normal person can cause pain and suffering to another. Milgram also noticed that the inclination toward a particular characteristic or type of behavior of the teacher was to devalue or demean the learner, to help to internally justify the teacher’s behavior of continuing to conduct the shocks in which it helped to continue the process of the experiment. The experiment gave an enormous amount of insight into the human behavior and the human obedience.

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Similarly, an experiment performed by Stanley Milgram in 1963 proves that obedience to authority figures can become very harmful. In Milgram’s experiment he asks for volunteers to come and “take part in the study of learning” (McLeod 584). This is the first dilemma with his research. He was advertising a completely different experiment. The volunteers are asked to read to a “student” a set of words and if the “student” did not respond correctly then the volunteer must shock the “student” with increasing voltages of electricity.

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In the Milgram Experiment, Milgram focuses on the effects of authority, or legitimate power. The participants of the experiment are given roles as “teachers” and the choice to opt out anytime, but they seem to forget this when Mr. Williams, the experimenter and the supposed figure of authority, orders them to continue when they refuse to persist administering shocks to the “learner”. He politely starts off with, “Please continue.” When the teacher insistently protests, he uses a stronger statement, such as, “You have no other choice but to continue.” This tricks the teacher into thinking that he or she does not have another option, and they reluctantly continue the experiment thinking that they could have possibly killed a human being.

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However, the experiment was fixed. The subject of the study was always the “teacher” and the “learner” was a member of Milgram’s research team. The unsuspecting participant would witness electrodes attached

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“Informed consent is a critical basic safeguard” (Graziano & Raulin, 2013, p.70). Confidentiality on the other hand is also very important because most experiments require some personal information. “Specifically, the researcher must maintain strict confidentiality of the information gathered about participant” (Graziano & Raulin, 2013, p.70). I also noticed that the experiment didn’t specify that any risk to the participants outweigh the potential benefits which has me asking questioning if people didn’t have enough information why would they even agree to doing this experiment to begin with? “The Belmont Report argued that participants in research have the right to know what the study involves, and researchers must give them enough clear information so they can freely decide whether to participate” (Graziano & Raulin, 2013, p.69).

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An infamous experiment on obedience to authority by Stanley Milgram’s (1963) has brought a lot of speculations and arguments in both fields of psychology and ethics. Even after decades, the experiment remains controversial to me. It is one of those fascinating studies that has caught my interest. Although it was quite unethical and very deceptive in nature, its findings had brought “disturbing” awareness to us, people. It was disturbing in a sense that most us did not expect to obtain such results but nevertheless, it certainly gave us something to ponder upon.

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The Milgram Obedience experiment was conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1963 focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He wanted to investigate whether people are willing to connect atrocious acts by being obedient to authority figures. In the experiment the participant was paired with one of Milgram’s confederates and they drew lots to find out who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher”. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher and Milgram

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A teacher and a student were elected, they were separated one in each room. The teacher had to teach words to the student, when the student made a mistake the teacher would punish by a discharge of 15 volts. The student was an accomplice of the experiment, never received electric shocks. Whenever the teacher sent the electric charge a recorded audio was activated making noises imitating pain. When the teacher heard these noises they would get scared and wanted to quit, they didn’t wanted to continue but Milgram would tell them that they should continue to follow the experiment and that they could not stop, they had no choice.

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As a specialist in research, it was Milgram's primary duty to have an experiment were his theory could be tried yet in addition were participants would be educated of what they were taking part in. This prompts the dishonest issue that this experiment caused the vast majority of the participants pain, which was a consequence of them being deceived about the experiment. Ethical issues that have been put forward would prevent such a study being replicated today, but a less harmful technique to test the means of obedience may be less applicable to the real world (Glassman & Hadad 2004). Milgram's examinations have been criticized intensely and justifiably so, it is undoubted that participant were put under extensive pressure. Be that as it may,

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Everyday people will follow orders given by the authority, whether they want to or not and even if they think it is wrong. Stanley Milgram did countless studies on this to find the truth behind the startling idea. He was curious to know if people would follow orders given by the authority to the point of hurting another human being. The test included a teach, learner and experimenter.

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229 Words | 1 Pages

The Milgram experiment is an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram who was a psychologist at Yale University that focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. He would use an electric shock generator and the generator is mark from 15 volts which is slight shock to 375 volts which danger or severe shock to 450 volts which is beyond danger. As a result, people are likely to follow orders given by authority figure. I mention the Milgram experiment because the father in The Sellout wants his son to keep answering the questions despite that the narrator have to shock himself if he does not know

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The participants themselves were concerned with the ethical issues of the study. Milgram reported the occasion where subjects became spellbind in the technical machinery, possibly seeing themselves as technicians so as to surrender management of ethical constraints to the experimenter itself (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 1974). Milgram designated this as ‘agentic state’ and reported that the participants stop seeing themselves as liable and saw themselves as an agent for another, i.e. the experimenter with respect to the study. Milgram also found that the subjects come to view the experiment as an entity unto itself, divorced from human control and he termed it as

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One ethical issue was deception; Milgram made his subjects believe that they were really shocking the ‘learner,’ when the ‘learner’ was actually a confederate of the experimenter. Milgram conducted an interview afterwards to evaluate the effect of deception, 83.7% of participants said that they were “glad to be in the experiment” (McLeod, "The Milgram Experiment”). Their eagerness to participate in an experiment in which they were asked to harm another individual indicates that these participants may have obeyed orders regardless of if there was an authority figure within the room or not. Furthermore, the experiment was designed to put the participants in a great amount of stress (McLeod, "The Milgram Experiment”). Researchers have found that stress can alter one’s decision-making process, causing them to focus on the positives (money the participants gain) rather than the negatives of the experiment (the harm that may be caused to the ‘learner’) ("Stress Changes How”).

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