The Effects Of Deceit : A Look At The Stanley Milgram Experiment

The Milgram experiment was a very famous study on obedience. The research was on everyday people and their compliance towards authority figures orders to inflict pain on others. Participants were instructed to give “fake” electric shocks to students, who are actually actors, learning memory tasks. They were instructed to give out electric shocks to the learners each time they gave a wrong response and would also move a level higher on the shock initiator each additional time an answer was incorrect. As the voltage level of these shocks increased, the students would pretend to cry out in pain, asking for it to stop. Some participants still increased shocks when this occurred, others hesitated and began asking questions. In our text it states

Ethical and moral concerns often exist with the use of deception in psychological research and experiments. Bortolotti and Mameli (2006) argue that, with the satisfaction of some requirements, the possibility exist for the use of deceptive techniques without causing harm to

The results discovered in psychological experiments such as Milgram’s outweigh the negativity of the responses from test subjects. Milgram’s results brought a deeper insight to humans and their interactions with authority and provided a possible explanation to the Nazis’ responses in the Nuremberg trials. Psychological sciences simply cannot advance if consent forms become restrictive to the point that everything is revealed to the student before the experiment has started. Specifically, informing teachers that they were not administering real electric shocks to the learner would make the teachers not take the experiment seriously and/or provide disingenuous reactions to the learner’s cries of pain.

Roscoe argued that Milgram’s sleight-of-hand was warranted and no worse than administering placebos to participants. A placebo is an inert substance administered to a person, which is thought to have no known impact. In contemporary times, medical doctors are largely viewed as dishonest if they were to unethically administer placebos to patients without their knowledge. According to Blease, Colloca, and Kapthuk (2016), the medical doctor-partner relationship is founded on a trust covenant. The same applies to the relationship between psychological researcher and subject(s). Nonetheless, Milgram was abusive of this covenant. It is conceded that the use of placebos is yet another form of deception. It is also conceded that placebos can and do create both physical and psychological repercussions. Even so, deceived from the beginning (Brannigan, 2013), the Milgram subjects experienced extreme physical and psychological effects after the study which cannot be equated with the usage of a placebo sugar

Upon researching Milgram’s study more in depth and weighing the opinions of those who feel it is an ethical study versus those in opposition I add my opinion to those who feel the experiment was an unethical practice. This paper will explain more of why I feel this way. I will also provide four peer reviewed sources supporting my argument.

The learner was taken into a room where they would be connected to different types of electric fittings while strapped into a chair. While the teacher would observe what was going on. During the training session the teacher had to give the learner word groups and if the learner got them incorrect the teacher would shock the learner. The objective of the shock was to see if the learner would learn better if they knew that there would be repercussion if they got the word group incorrect. Each time that the learner got a group of words incorrect, the teacher would increase the amount of volts that the learner would get shocked with. Milgram had the teacher to increase the volts until the learner scream stop, however the teacher was instructed to continue until the volts reached an amount that was to the limit it could kill the learner. Before the learner entered the session it was stated that the learner had a heart condition and that the experiment should not exceed the amounts of volts that would be harmful enough to cause damage. As the volts increased the learner expressed he wanted to stop and the teacher was instructed to continue, the teacher continued until maximum volts were applied to the learner an the learner complained about his heart issue at this point the learner fell without movement and that when the teacher was informed that he was

Unbeknownst to the participants, an actor was placed in the position of the learner; therefore, each participant was forced to become the teacher required to administer the punishment. As instructed, each teacher administered punishment accordingly; however, when the learner began to feel a more intense pain, the teachers became hesitant and did not want to continue administering shocks. During this process, the instructor became demanding and insisted that the teacher continue to administer further levels of shock. The more the learner screamed out in pain, complained of his heart, and begged for release, the instructor demanded the teacher to administer more shocks. Even with threats, some participants continued to maintain their position in either

Perhaps being one of the most famous studies when it comes to human obedience, the Milgram Experiment was one that psychologists debate to this day. Conducted by Stanley Milgram, the aim of the experiment was to investigate whether Germans were particularly compliant to dominant figures, as this was a common justification for the Nazi murder spree in World War II.

Keeping in mind that both the learner and the teacher were separated by a wall where they can here each other but not see each other. The learner was purposely giving the wrong answer, and with each answer the teacher gave him a shock. Moreover, after a few shocks with the learner being in pain asking the teacher to stop, the last one refused to continue. However, they were told off by the experimenter, that they cannot stop and must carry on. The outcome of the experiment was a high number almost 65% of the participants reached up to 450 volts of electric shocks. However, all participants reached to 300 volt. Furthermore, it is concluded that people tend to obey the order of an authority figure even if it go against their conscience, in this case the experimenter in the lab coat, despite it could potentially involves the harm of others. Additionally, Orne & Holland (1968), believed that since these studies were conducted under a laboratory conditions (controlled environment), they lack the experimental validity. Thus it is considered unrealistic situation, where it does not resemble a real life situation. Other points were made, first, that this experiment does not include females. Which raises the question of whether these findings apply to females as well as the male participants or not? Second, these participants

The Milgram study was considered to be one of the most famous studies, on obedience in the history of psychology. The Milgram study was done by Stanley Milgram a Yale University psychologist, whose study was to focus on two things one being obedience to authority, and a persons personal conscience. The results of the study were remarkable, as according to (McLeod, 2007) 65 percent of two-thirds of the participants or teachers continued administering shocks to the highest voltage level of 450 volts. The rest of the teachers continued to at least 300 volts. Milgram did this experiment in 18 different ways and altered the independent variables in each trail to see how it affects the outcome or dependent variable. Milgram’s experiment was directly influenced by World war 2 and the holocaust, and while Milgram wanted to test how far people would go in obeying instructions even at the risk of hurting someone. Following Milgram’s experiment he came up with two types of theories, one being the autonomous state, which says that people tend to direct their own actions, and take responsibility for the results of those actions.

One of the reasons why Milgram’s obedience study has a deficiency of ethics is because the severe emotional distress that must of the participants were having during the study process. During the experiment, the

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.[1]

Baumrind claimed that as the experiment was held in the laboratory, the atmosphere of the place created certain pressure on the subjects because of the unfamiliarity with the setting (372). The psychologist emphasized that “the anxiety and passivity generated by the setting” contributed to the participants’ inclination to “behave in an obedient suggestible way” (Baumrind 372). However, Milgram has conducted another experiment by renting a place in Bridgeport and presenting it as a commercial organization. The results of the study did not show much

The people chosen were normal, outstanding citizens, and had no problems with doing the test in the beginning. A shock at 45-volts to 100-volts was fine for most. The test subjects had no problem with inflicting a little bit of pain on each other. Things changed, when the “student” would start to miss more and more questions and end up with higher voltage shocks. It started to bother the conscience of the “teacher” when they began to hear the screams of the “student”. Some teachers refused to go any further, but one shocking test subject, out of fear went all the way up to 450-volts. What’s interesting is that the “teacher” argued with the trainer that was giving the questions for the “student”. The “teacher” argued that he didn’t want to hurt the guy (student) anymore, that he was screaming in agony, he was hurting, that later turned into, he didn’t want to be responsible if anything severe happened to the “student”. But, even after expressing that he wanted to stop, the “teacher” out of fear broke his moral standing and continued the experiment.

They used this anguish to describe mental confliction between stopping for the “learner” and continuing for science. This is evidence that participants are considering the experimenters expectations and not blindly obeying (Haslam and Reicher, 2012). Furthermore, Burger (2009) replicated aspects of Milgram’s experiment in an ethical manner, but found difficulties in gaining strong results. For example, Burger allowed a maximum voltage of 150mv (contrasting to Milgram’s 450mv) and could only predict whether participants would go further. Milgram’s unethical practices played critical roles in gaining the robust results he did.