Essay on Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The second problem will be it is difficult to anticipate how a person my react to experimental situations. The assumptions are usually less significant to the actual observation results. Milgram asked a variety of people to guess how many people will obey in his experiment with the pressure and commands from an authority figure. Almost all participants have obeyed in his experiment, which is unexpected; since he and the majority of people think that the participants will not obey because of the commands that can harm someone. It is not his fault.

This Stanford Experiment violated a few of the Five General Principles of Ethics. The young men were offered $15 a day to participate in a study that lasted for one to two weeks that “wanted to see what they psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard” (Zimbardo, 1999). One being “Principle A: Beneficence and Nonmaleficence” which

The participant was not given full disclose about the details of the experiment, making the research untruthful. Freedom was another principle that was violated since the participants’ ability to withdraw from the experiment was highly discouraged. Even though it was possible to withdraw, not much power was given to the participant. Lastly, Milgram was neither altruistic nor giving of dignity to the participant. Participants showed signs of stress and possible psychological damage due to the process of harming another individual, but that did not stop the experiment. Milgram instructed the participants to continue the study until the very end. In order to make this experiment more ethical, Milgram should have set up the experiment in a way that did not give the illusion of causing harm to another human being. Also, participants should have been able to withdraw from the experiment without questioning. Lastly, Milgram should have known to stop the study once he saw the participant showing signs of distress and pain. This is to cause less harm to the participant and promote

However, when they conducted their experiments they did not breach any ethical guidelines since they did not exist (Matta, 2014). Hence, to protect the welfare, rights, dignity, and mental health of the participants, strict ethical guidelines were introduced in psychological experiments which have positively influenced the field of psychology. Also, due to ethical frameworks, people are viewed as ‘participants’ of a study instead of ‘subjects’ in an experiment. They also make psychological experiments more reputable, leading to an increase in the willingness of participation by people as their safety is ensured. The increased willingness of participation is beneficial in order to discover more about human behaviour, the effectiveness of treatment, mechanisms of a psychiatric disorder etc.

The prisoners were emotionally and mentally harmed during the experiment. The prisoners started to lose their identity, and instead started identifying themselves as their number. One participant even went on a hunger strike for the time that he was in the prison. Another participant had to leave the study because he became excessively disturbed as time went on. After the study was done, people had trouble separating what the people did in the study to how they were in real life, which caused a problem when they all had to meet after the trial was over. This ethical violation is very apparent because Dr. Zimbardo did have to end the study before the two weeks was done.

One of the guidelines for experiments is to give participants informed consent. This means that they should be fully aware of the nature of the experiment, and any risks which the participants may be subjected to. In Milgram’s study, he told participants that the experiment was to test human learning through a memory game, which was partially true. In reality, however, the focus point was on obedience to authority figures, and the extent to which people would inflict pain on another individual simply because they were told to. This immediately breaches one of the guidelines, as participants were deceived and the true nature of the experiment was hidden. An issue with deception, however, is it cannot be avoided in all cases in order to provide the results in which the experiment is looking for. For example, if Milgram told

Looking at the history of human research experiments necessitates investigation into the background; why is it not sufficient to simply to undertake an experiment merely to broaden scientific study and understanding? Are not the psychologists and scientists ethical and professional? The answer is quite simply, not always. While many psychologists may have started their experiments with the best of intentions, there were a number that merely seized opportunities that were in their grasp. Hence, there came the need for the Belmont Report and the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Code of Ethics in direct response to testing on human subjects.

Ethics There were many examples of Milgram breaking the rules of Ethics in his obedience experiment, some of the examples are as follows: - Milgram says that the participants had the right to withdraw from the experiment however, Milgram was paying his participants so that may have made some of them feel like they must continue with the experiment. Also, the figure of authority’s word chose may have made them feel as though they had to stay for example it can be seen in the video “Milgram Experiment – Jeroen Busscher” that the figure of authority says, “please go on”. - The experiment also mentally harmed a few of the participants because they now knew that if they were told to do something they would no matter what the consequence was, even if the consequence was taking someone’s life. Background Information

Every single human being ever born has had a conscience. Some have used their conscience for the good, while others have used it unwisely. I personally have used my conscience every day. The conscience can help you make both big and small decisions as well as good and bad decisions. Being an important part of every day life for a human being, one should use their conscience in a good manner.

The main ethical issue with this experiment was the use of deception as the participants did not know the truth behind this study. Participants believe that they were shocking the learners and they were under severe stress due to this is possible that they had suffered psychological injuries. The participants have the right to withdraw from the study if they wanted; however, this was not made clear to them. Also, participants did not receive enough information about the study.

One might think that this experiment will stimulate the new research in the area of human obedience, but this did not occur. Despite the difficulties and the courage of Burger to conduct a partial replication of the original study, it did not produce any different outcomes and did not spark any new ideas in psychology (Burger, 2009). Instead, the researcher had to deal with an enormous amount of different commentaries and controversy. My main rationale for disapproving the Burger’s study is ethical characteristics of the Milgram paradigm. More specifically, now we have the Ethical Rules of the APA, which tell us that researchers should honor rights of participants to privacy, confidentiality and the right to withdraw the experiment. However, Milgram’s paradigm clearly challenges these fundamental rights and creates even more ethical dilemmas. Another rationale that I can include is the infliction of increasing pain on an unwilling participant, a characteristic that is unacceptable in modern psychological studies. Therefore, I would disapprove such experiment, because of ethical non-compliance and little contribution to the field. As for me, I view following ethical practices in my dissertation project work as a crucial element for success. It will allow me to produce reliable, meaningful and relevant scholarly data that would not be a subject to ethical

In his short story "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", Nathaniel Hawthorne makes a point to grant all of the characters varying human vices to try and instill in the reader a lesson about learning from their mistakes. When the reader is first introduced to Dr. Heidegger and his guests, the author gives some background on all of the characters. It becomes clear that Mr. Medbourne is known for his love of money, Widow Wycherly for her pride, Colonel Killigrew for lusting after sinful pleasures, and Mr. Gascoigne for his abuse of power and hypocrisy. From what is shown, all of the characters possess the trait of greed. When given the chance to return to their youth, they repeat the same mistakes.

In this experiment, subjects are explained that this is “a ‘learning experiment’ to ... study the effects of punishment on memory” (4). Yet, the real intention here is to measure the participants’ compliance towards the experimenter. This controversy is unethical as subjects are volunteering for a cause that does not exist. They are misled since they are not exposed to the real purpose of this study.

Denis Diderot once said, “There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.” Denis Diderot discusses the overall way to obtain information. When wanting to know statistics, numerous experiments need to be performed in order to provide accurate results. Through the abundant of experiments performed, human experimentation is one of those tests. Upon hearing the words “human experimentation,” individuals automatically assume grotesque, immoral, and unethical tests being conducted on people. However, this is untrue because experimenting on humans is beneficial to the citizens

The “set in stone” guidelines should be followed to control the experiments and give the jury standards to judge on. Short and long term health issues are the biggest concerns. Some experiments could make a participant crazy or fearful if given the right circumstances. Along with experiments affecting mental heath, physical health could be affected as well. One could refuse to