Milgram's Ethical Theory

Stanley Milgram’s obedience study is known as the most famous study ever conducted. Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment that focused on the conflict between personal conscience and compliance to command. This experiment was conducted in 1961, a year following the court case of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram formulated the study to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974). The investigation was to see whether Germans were specially obedient, under the circumstances, to dominant figures. This was a frequently said explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II.

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

This essay will look at an important key psychological experiment carried out by the renowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram which was carried out in the early 1960’s (Banyard 2012) to determine how far ordinary people would go to inflict pain to a fellow human based on instruction from an authority figure, and that of the replication of the experiment which was carried out by Burger in 2009 (Byford 2014) to determine if the same level of obedience was still applicable in the 21st Century, as was observed in the original study some 40 years earlier. The

The study was set up as a "blind experiment" to capture if and when a person will stop inflicting pain on another as they are explicitly commanded to continue. The participants of this experiment included two willing individuals: a teacher and a learner. The teacher being the real subject and the learner is merely an actor. Both were told that they would be involved in a study that tests the effects of punishment on

Those subjects either played the role of a student or a teacher. The Teachers were told to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to the learner when questions were answered incorrectly. The shock levels were from 15 to 450 volts. In the Milgram Obedience Study Video, it states that” Many if not most subjects were troubled by it and found it a highly conflicted experience... Some were laughing hysterically after inflicting damage upon them,” meaning that this quote not only presents how the experiment gave too much power to the experimenters but also shows the misuse in power (Milgram, 6:40-7:00).

The shockers were told they could walk out at and time and still get paid for their time. The viewer can see that the effect of orders from authority can control what people do. It is also shown that even if the test subjects can walk away from the experiment at any time, the influence of authority draws them away from doing so. In a nutshell, The Milgram Experiment Revisited delineates that authoritative figures can manipulate people to do things that they wouldn’t generally do, such as inflict pain on

Ethical Guidelines that are Broken in Milgram's Study on Obedience The ethical guidelines suggest that debriefing the participants after the experiment is essential, which Milgram has done it thoroughly in order to reveal the aim and the true purpose of his study. Although he did not expect the out come of his research, but his ethics shows that the research is beneficial of understanding the welfare of World War II.

In Stanley Milgram’s article “The Perils of Obedience,” several people volunteer to participate in Milgram’s experiment. It consists of a learner and a teacher. When the learner fails to memorize a word pair, the teacher applies a shock to the learner. The shocks increase in severity with each wrong answer, attaining a maximum voltage of 450 volts. Milgram states many psychiatrists he interviewed before the experiment predicted most subjects would not go past 150 volts, or the point at which the learner starts to ask to leave (Milgram 80). In his first experiment, twenty-five out of forty subjects continued the experiment until the end (Milgram 80). After several more experiments at different locations, Milgram obtained the same results. Milgram

Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment was of much controversy when it was carried out in the early 1960’s and many questioned its ethical design. Milgram wanted to study the relationship between obedience to authority and moral conscience. To do this, he randomly assigned his participants into two groups, one group being the “learners” and the other, the “teachers”. The teachers and learns were to wait together until they were called in for the experiment. Once called, the teacher would remain in a room with an electric shock generator (to administer shocks the learner) and the “experimenter”, who actually was an actor is a lab coat.

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

In fact, the experiment heavily relied on deception, and would have quite possibly been jeopardized had it not been for the deception involved in it. Subjects were told they would be participating in a different experiment in all aspects; the experiment would be one in which they were "teachers," trying to reinforce concepts through "punishment" (shocks) on a "learner". The deception involved in this and similar experiments during this time was enough to spark a serious conversation about research ethics during the time, and how the guidelines surrounding them needed to be drastically improved

At this point, the Teacher and Learner were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. The Teacher was then given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample what the Learner would supposedly to receive during the experiment. After the Teacher was given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the Learner. The Teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. To respond the Learner would press a button to indicate their answer, if the answer was wrong the teacher would shock the Learner with the voltage increasing by 15-volts for each wrong answer, if correct the Teacher would read the next word pair. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer the Learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a series of wrong answers the Learner would start complaining about their heart, afterwards there would be no response from the Learner at all. Many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner at this point in the experiment. Some paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment, while most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects even began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress when they heard the screams of the

On arriving for the experiment they were told that they would play he role of the teacher. They were to read a series of words pairs to an individual on the opposite side of a partition. They were to test the individuals' memory by giving him a word and asking him to select the correct matching word from four alternatives. Each time the learner made an error, they were to give him/her an electric shock at the touch of a lever. The individual was strapped into an electric chair while they watched. The teachers had levers in front of them labelled from 15 to 450 volts and switches labelled from slight shock to danger: severe shock to the final ‘XXX'. They were instructed to move one lever higher on the shock generator each time the learner made an error. There were not of course any shocks.

To authenticate the potential electrical intensity to the learner the teacher is sampled with a 45-volt shock to the wrist. The teacher is then instructed to administer an incrementally increasing punishing electrical shock for each incorrect answer. This follows several methods to inform the teacher of the potential impact of the electrical shock that they will administer. These included, warnings listing the voltage range of 15 to 450-volts labeled Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock, Danger Severe Shock, and XXX, bright red

The APA ethical guidelines help to ensure that all psychological research maintains the integrity that it does not do harm or conflicts with the majority of the human populations moral ethical codes. However, in some situations the APA ethical guidelines must be viewed as just that: guidelines. If a study has the potential to benefit humanity as a whole and does not result in the permanent or irreparable harm to a human being then some guidelines must be permitted to be stretched or even broken in the interest of human advancement and scientific progression. After all the goal and responsibility of a psychologist is to enhance our understanding of human behavior as well as to find ways to use this information to better society and humanity