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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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