ipl-logo

What Is The Milgram Experiment Unethical

599 Words3 Pages

Introduction
Obedience means follow the commands given by an authority figure. The level of obedience by individuals becomes nowadays’ concern. Between 1941 to 1945, 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz which is known as “Nazi Holocaust”. The organizer Adolf Eichmann (1962) stated in his letter that “he was just following orders”. This defence allows most of the Americans believed the evil capacity of Nazi Germany. But Stanley Milgram (1963), a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment to examine whether individuals would obey the instructions even individuals might realize it is unethical. The volunteers were informed that they were undertaking a scientific research to improve memory. There were three roles in the experiment, …show more content…

In Milgram’s first set of experiments, 65% of participants continued the experiments till 450-volt shock. All participants administered shocks of at least 300V. The result of Milgram’s experiment evokes the whole world and the experiment has been replicated in many different countries over the world.

As the experiment was unethical, the original Milgram’s experiment was forbidden. But after 50 years, Burger (2009) proposed the similar experiment with ethical considerations to examine the level of obedience of participants. The experiment decreasing the times of pressing the button from 30 times (450V) to 10 times (150V) which reducing the level of distress. However, the results do not show many differences from 45 years ago – 90% of the participants pressed the 10th button. Another point of concern in the article by Dolinski et al (2017) is the level of disobedience might change because of the learner’s sex. The result has shown the refusal to continue the experiment is three times greater if the learner is female. Still, the sample of only 10% of participants failed to complete the whole experiment, the hypothesis could not be confirmed

Show More
Related
323 Words | 2 Pages

In the video of the Stanley Milgram Experiment People were given roles as teachers and students. The students had been hooked up to an electrical system were they had been received questions and whenever they had answered incorrectly they received a dosage of electricity and got progressively got stronger each time they were wrong. At a certain point the student stopped responding to pain and the scientist had kept making them give a voltage. Some People discontinued the experiment.

Read More
315 Words | 2 Pages

Title (psychology #7) In the Abu Ghraib Torture and the Milgram experiment even though they had different reasoning behind it, the same concept is behind it. The obedience to authority people tend to have is either to obey or disobey authority and do what they think is right. In both this situation many people decided to obey authority and break their morals.

Read More
619 Words | 3 Pages

Milgram’s generation needed conclusive answers about the “final solution”. Standard ethics in modern day psychology state that participants in any experiment must not be deceived, and that they must be made aware of any consequences. In fairness, research performed after the experiment, indicated that there were no long term psychological effects on the participants. However, the fact that these “teachers” thought that they had caused suffering to another human being, could have caused severe emotional

Read More
462 Words | 2 Pages

He received a bachelor’s in political science from Queens College and received a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University. Milgram worked as a research assistant to Solomon Asch and was influence by Ashs’ conformity experiment. In 1961 he began to conduct the obedience experiment. He wondered how far person would go when ordered by an authority figure to hurt another person even if it was against their beliefs. The participant, also known as the “teacher” , had to administer shocks to the “learner” each time the learner was wrong as well as increase the shock voltage.

Read More
491 Words | 2 Pages

One of the most well known studies of obedience in Psychology was produced by Stanley Milgram. Milgram started experimenting shortly after World War II, in 1969. Milgram was fascinated by the fact that thousands of people simply listened to Adolf Hitler when he demanded them to murder millions of innocent Jews. In Milgram’s book Obedience to Authority, he asked, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?”(Milgram, 1974)

Read More
661 Words | 3 Pages

If it is a matter of survival some of us would do it and others would be so traumatized that they would probably commit suicide due to the psychological effects that they suffered from. These studies make some sense as to why those in high ranking positions during the Holocaust followed directions of Adolf Eichmann (ABC Primetime, 2007). However, there were more factors to the Holocaust atrocities than just following directions; it included extreme hate as

Read More
707 Words | 3 Pages

At the forefront of this account is Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment. The experiment saw a learner on one side of the wall and the teacher, the subject of the experiment, on the other. The subject was instructed by the experimenter to meet any wrong answers from the learner with electric shocks of increasing intensity from 15 up to 450 vaults. The subject was given a shock of 45 vaults in order to experience the intensity of the treatment. (Jones 2006:271)

Read More
934 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
668 Words | 3 Pages

At the end of the study, 95% of the participants obeyed and instructed the confederate to shock the victim to the maximum 450 volts. For those who chose to disobey, they mostly decided to do so between the “strong” and “very strong” levels of shock. To see the effects on obedience when the experiment was conducted in a less prestigious location, Milgram conducted the baseline experiment in a run down office building. In this variation, the main location of the experiment was moved from Yale University to a run down office building in Bridgeport, CT.

Read More
351 Words | 2 Pages

Obedience to Authority experiment, which was also known as the Milgram experiment, was considered as one of the most famous and ethically criticized experiment in psychological history. In 1961, Milgram performed the first of a series of experiments to test how far individuals would go in obeying orders given by authority, even when the orders could violate their moral standards and cause harms to innocent individuals. In the experiment, the subjects were told that the purpose of the study was to test how punishment effects the learning. Milgram selected 40 normal adult men between the ages of 20 and 50 from different backgrounds and occupations as the experimental subjects. The participants were assigned the role of the teacher, whereas a

Read More
1152 Words | 5 Pages

The reason of his interest was caused by a remark after the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was on trial for war crimes committed during War World II. The remark was how Adolf Eichmann’s defense claimed he was simply following instructions when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews. The participation to the learning of Milgram’s experiments draw many subjects with the promise of participation to be paid in the amount of $4.50. It all begins with a shock generator, and the focus is on the person who has the role of the “teacher,” the teacher watches the learner taking part in a learning memory game. The shock generator has many levels of voltage starting from 30 volts and all the way to 450 volts.

Read More
168 Words | 1 Pages

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,

Read More
981 Words | 4 Pages

The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.

Read More
1326 Words | 6 Pages

This technique can determine how a person can be induced to do something they might not normally do (Snyder and Cunnigham, 1975). This technique can relate to Milgram’s (1963) study as the experimenter starts with easy commands, instructing the participant to gradually increase the intensity of the shocks each time. Starting the experiment with smaller shocks will make it easier for the participant to carry on with the experiment as the shocks get stronger (Gilbert, 1981). If the participant started the experiment shocking the victim with a higher voltage, they would probably be more reluctant to carry on with the experiment. Therefore, to test obedience levels, Milgram (1963) would have to create a procedure which requires the participant to shock the learner at the highest voltage level, as the results of the current study implies that Milgram (1963) was unaware of how effective the “foot-in-the-door” procedure is to create high levels of compliance (Goldman, Creason and McCall,

Read More
708 Words | 3 Pages

His experiment was all a hoax. The shock machine was fake. All he wanted was to know how many people would be obedient and how many would be defiant. Much to Milgram’s surprise sixty-five percent of people did what were told of them, and only thirty-five percent were

Read More

More about What Is The Milgram Experiment Unethical

Related Topics

Open Document