The Internal State of Ethical Behavior Essay

The Milgram experiment was conducted in 1963 by Stanley Milgram in order to focus on the conflict between obedience to authority and to personal conscience. The experiment consisted of 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, and who’s jobs ranged from unskilled to professional. The roles of this experiment included a learner, teacher, and researcher. The participant was deemed the teacher and was in the same room as the researcher. The learner, who was also a paid actor, was put into the next room and strapped into an electric chair. The teacher administered a test to the learner, and for each question that was incorrect, the learner was to receive an electric shock by the teacher, increasing the level of shock each time. The shock generator ranged from

He conducted 18 different variations of the original experiment. When changing different variables the obedience percentage dropped significantly. These variations showed that when the “authority” figure was wearing some sort of uniform the obedience levels would rise but when the participants question their authority they percentage decreased. In other variations the learner and the teacher were placed in the same room so the teacher can experience the pain the learner was going through. In this variation the obedience fell too. Throughout all of the variations the percentage of participants administering the maximum 450 volts decreased significantly when different variables were added to the

For each experiment there was one teacher (participant); one learner (an accomplice called Mr. Wallace pretending to be a participant); and one experimenter (an actor called Mr. Williams who wore a grey lab coat). The participant and accomplice were asked to draw slips of paper from a hat, which was rigged, therefore, allowing the accomplice to always be the learner and the participant to be the teacher. The learner was taken into a room in Yale Interaction Laboratory, where he was strapped to an electric chair with electrodes attached to his arms. The teacher and experimenter were taken into another room where there was a shock generator with 30 labelled voltage levels ranging from 15 to 450 volts. 15 volts was verbally designated to be Slight Shock, and 450 volts was verbally designated to be a danger-severe shock (XXX).

With each wrong answer came an electric shock that the teacher, a random male participant, had to physically cause. The teacher could hear the learner after a while begging to stop. At this point the teachers causing the pain are obviously uncomfortable. Some start by laughing nervously and other just immediately beg to stop the experiment. At this point the experimenter gives a series of orders to push the teacher to continue. As a result, two-thirds of participants carried on shocking the learner to the highest level of four hundred and fifty volts. All the participants involved continued up to three hundred

Imagine being strapped down with the fear of getting shocked repeatedly from getting only one question wrong. For the experiment one of the “learners” quotes when being shocked, “Through the microphone.. Let me out, let me out! I’ve had enough, let me outta here!” (Skinner 36). This quote shows how much pain the people were in and how much trauma it caused both the “learner” and “teacher”.

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

In the experiment, a person is given the task to ask another person, who is in a separate room, a question. If the person gets the question wrong, they are given an electrical shock. A higher voltage shock is given if the questions are answered incorrectly. A scream is heard every time the shock occurs. The person believes they are really shocking the person answering the questions.

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.

Last class we spoke about The Stanley Milgam Experiments, The Stanford Prison Experiments and The Asch Conformity Experiments. We discussed authority and what that does to people in vulnerable or difficult scenarios. This class forced me to question how I’ve been throughout my life during traumatic events and how I’ll act in the future, should these situations arise. In the Milgram experiment there was a 'teacher' assigned and a 'student' assigned. The 'teacher' cannot see their 'student' but can hear them.

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.

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

The study was conducted by Stanley Milgram and aimed to examine how people “reacted to instructions from authorized individuals when the actions conflicted with their personal safety and conscience” (De Vos, 2009, p.226). The participants were instructed to work in pairs and play different roles. In each pair, one of the participants played a role of a “learner,” and was presented with different questions from the “teacher,” the second person in the pair. Experimenters observed the questioning process and asked “teachers” to apply an electric shock to “learners” when they gave wrong answers to questions. The main problem in the research was ethical, as the more than a half of “teachers” were instructed to apply electric shocks up to the level of 450 volts, which could be very harmful. However, the “learners” were asked to provide mainly wrong questions, and the “teachers” were not aware of this intention (Milgram, 2010). At the end of the study, the experimenters revealed the deception. The research concluded that “teachers” were likely to obey instructions from authorized individuals, even when the health of “learners” supposedly was in serious

However, this experiment was all fake, the learner was also a person who knew what was going on just like how it was for the Asch Conformity, there were no real shocks they just gave fake screams to make it seem like it was real! The whole point was to test if the teacher would follow the directions and go all the way to 450 volts. Some people actually gave up because they couldn’t live with hurting an innocent person and some people went all the way to 450 volts. I remember watching this experiment in one of my high school classes I am still just as shocked as I was while watching the video.

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

Ethical behavior is often seen as amoral when used for persuasive purposes. This is possible because persuasion may be used in unethical situations as well as ethical situations. Either way, it depends upon the person who is trying to persuade others. Adolf Hitler is an excellent example of someone who persuaded millions of people to behave unethically. On the other hand, Mother Teresa used persuasion for ethical reasons by caring for the sick and the orphaned, and because of this has impacted an entire world.