Stanley Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram 's "Behavioural Study of Obedience portrays the ideas that which the holocaust was carried out, the study showed how one person that was instructed by another a superior, infringe on the rights of a person.Stanley Milgram performed the experiment by allowing confederates to administer different levels of shock treatment to subjects who failed to answer correctly. Stanley Milgram(1963) wanted to identify to what extent would a person administer shock treatment to another in terms of being obedient ,although many of Milgram’ peers who analyzed his study on Obedience found that Milgram was unethical in his design of the study(Baumrind.1964). In the following essay I will attempt to explain whether the experiment was ethical.

The harm brought upon the participants are emotional rather than physical as the participants are led to believe they are administering different levels of shock treatment to confederates which inturn measure their capacity of obedience.This aspect of the study proves to be unethical as the experiment brings about harm to the subjects for eg. The subjects break out in sweats , trembling occurs , nervous laughter , the digging of their fingers into the skin etc( Mcleod, 2007). Informed Consent: can be explained as informing the potential participant about the nature of the research and what exactly is being experimented and therefore the subject suggests whether he/she would like to participate in the research program. The study proves to be unethical in this aspect as it blatantly lied to the respondents about the nature of the study, which could cause the subject to loose trust in a rational authority in the future.the researcher did not disclose the true nature of the study which is a serious violation of the subjects

This is something that the subject is going through they are being deceived on a emotional level, as they were not informed about the study directly, in this case it is unethical as the subjects privacy and rights have been violated as the experiment denies that on part of the subject , lacking in consideration for the subjects welfare and emotional well being from the experimenter.

Action and Competence of researchers:when one is conducting a test ,they must conduct themselves in an ethical behavioural manner,eg when working with others they should not be biased. They should be able to justify themselves in a justifiable manner as well as be able to conduct themselves with sufficient knowledge about what they were researching. Although the Behavioural Study of obedience in my opinion was not ethical in many ways the results were proven to be precise and concluded with the desired