Why did Milgram conduct his experiments on obedience?
The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure. Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor.
What are the results of the Milgram obedience study?
- The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance.
- The fact that Yale (a trusted and authoritative academic institution) sponsored the study led many participants to believe that the experiment must be safe.
- The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random.
What was Stanley Milgram's main purpose?
The Purpose Of The Milgram Experiment
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What was the motivation behind Stanley Milgram?
What was the motivation behind Stanley Milgram's experiment? He conducted an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Click to see full answer.
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Is the Milgram obedience experiment ethical?
The experiment is considered unethical because the people who were the participants were led to believe that they were administering a shock to real people. The individuals were unaware the learners were individuals associated with Milligram.
What would make the Milgram experiment ethical?
Ethical Concerns in the Milgram Experiment Some of the major ethical issues in the experiment were related to: The use of deception. The lack of protection for the participants who were involved. Pressure from the experimenter to continue even after asking to stop, interfering with participants' right to withdraw.
Was Milgram's experiment justified?
Milgram freely admits that the results of the experiment were not predicted by any involved (194). Thus, the deception could not have been justified by foreknowledge that subjects would eventually approve of being deceived, misled, and coerced.
What is a major problem with the original Milgram study?
what is a major problem with the original Milgram study? Milgram lied to his respondents, making his study borderline unethical. The field of social psychology studies topics at the intrapersonal level.
What makes a psychological experiment ethical?
APA's Ethics Code mandates that psychologists who conduct research should inform participants about: The purpose of the research, expected duration and procedures. Participants' rights to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research once it has started, as well as the anticipated consequences of doing so.
Why is the Milgram experiment so important?
Blass states that Milgram's obedience experiments are important because they provide a frame of reference for contemporary real-life instances of extreme, destructive obedience.
Why is deception an ethical issue?
Deception in research is unethical because the spirit of research requires a high moral standard. Medical ethics has reiterated the importance of integrity and justice, and the protection of the participant should always be of the utmost concern.
What did Milgram's experiment reveal about human behavior?
The Milgram experiment suggested that human beings are susceptible to obeying authority, but it also demonstrated that obedience is not inevitable.
What happened in the Milgram experiment?
In the Milgram experiment, social psychologist Stanley Milgram and researchers at Yale University studied human obedience to authority. They wanted...
Why was Stanley Milgram's experiment unethical?
Milgram's studies were unethical because of deceit and psychological harm inflicted on the volunteers. The volunteers were lied to about what the s...
What did the Milgram experiment conclude?
Milgram concluded, from his obedience study, that most people would submit to authority even if what they were doing was morally aversive. He descr...
What did Milgram's experiment reveal about human behavior?
The Milgram obedience study concluded that human beings can be coerced by an authority figure to harm another human being even when they would not...
What is Stanley Milgram famous for?
Stanley Milgram was most famous for his ethically questionable obedience studies. In these studies, Milgram deceived volunteers into first thinking...
Why were Milgram's subjects grateful?
It should be noted that many of Milgram’s subjects were afterward grateful to him for letting them know about some features of their character they would not have suspected about before the study (Milgram, 1974). Still, nowadays numerous restrictions were placed to keep research from becoming too unethical.
Why was Milgram's experiment controversial?
Milgram also claimed that his experiments caused the ethical criticism because extremely unnerving facts about the tendencies in human behaviour were un covered (Milgram, 1974). Noteworthy, this discovery may indeed be even dangerous in some cases, by showing some malevolent politicians how easy it might be to make people obey (Pina e Cunha, Rego, & Clegg, 2010). But many significant scientific discoveries might carry that threat, and it is arguable that they still bring more good than harm; in our case, if people know about the Milgram’s experiment, they might be less likely to obey openly harmful orders coming from some authority.
What was the purpose of the Milgram experiment?
The main experiment conducted by Milgram (1963) was designed to test the level of naive subjects’ obedience to authority. The subjects were told that the experiment tested the potency of punishment in improving learning capabilities, and were asked to administer electrical shocks to a “learner” (an accomplice of the experimenter). The subject did not know the shocks were false; measures were taken to convince the subject that the shocks were real. The “learner” was given some pairs of words. Then he was told one word from one of the pairs, and four more words. The “learner” had to choose the word that came in a pair with the first word, and press a respective button, which turned on a respective light that the participant could see. The subject did not see or hear the learner. If the answer was wrong, the subject was to apply an electric shock to the “learner” and continue.
What was the purpose of the Sheridan and King experiment?
Sheridan and King (1972) conducted another experiment in which participants, students who volunteered to take part in the experiment in order to fulfil a university course requirement, were to administer electrical shocks to a puppy they could partially see. After the experiment, the subjects were debriefed, reassured that the puppy was safe, handled the puppy, and interviewed. This experiment could be considered as more ethical due to the fact that, even though the shock was believed to be administered, the receiver was not a human but an animal. However, it is clear and justified that agitation and nervousness were still experienced by the subjects.
Why is the experimental method important?
The experimental method is an important tool that allows scientists to make significant discoveries. However, some of the most major findings were made during experiments the ethical side of which remains doubtful. The experiments conducted by Milgram in the 1960s are an example of such studies; their results were among ...
Why is it important that subjects are not aware of the nature of the study?
In many experiments, it is important that subjects are not aware of the nature of the study, so that their natural behaviour might be observed (Orne & Holland, 1968). However, the experiment conducted by Milgram uses direct lies and deception in order to prepare the participants for the test.
What percentage of subjects would administer the highest level of shock?
These results strictly contradicted all the predictions made by psychologists; it was expected that only about 0-3% of subjects would administer the highest level of shock (Milgram, 1963). However, similar experiments (with slight variations) were carried out later in other countries, and they also showed analogous levels of obedience in subjects (Smith & Bond, 1998, p. 23; Shanab & Yahya, 1978).
Why Is Milgram's Study Still So Powerful?
So why does Milgram's experiment maintain such a powerful hold on our imaginations, even decades after the fact? Perry believes that despite all its ethical issues and the problem of never truly being able to replicate Milgram's procedures, the study has taken on the role of what she calls a "powerful parable."
What Were the Milgram Experiments?
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act." - Stanley Milgram, 1974
How much did each participant get paid for participating in the Milgram experiment?
In exchange for their participation, each person was paid $4.50. 1
How many people refused to go along with Milgram's experiments?
When other people refused to go along with the experimenter's orders, 36 out of 40 participants refused to deliver the maximum shocks. 6
What percentage of participants in Milgram's study delivered the maximum shock?
The average prediction was that around 1% of participants would deliver the maximum shock. 3 In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks. 4
Why were participants carefully screened?
Participants were also carefully screened to eliminate those who might experience adverse reactions to the experiment.
Why was everyone debriefed at the end of the experiment?
Due to concerns about the amount of anxiety experienced by many of the participants, everyone was debriefed at the end of the experiment.
How many men were recruited for the Stanley Milgram experiment?
Stanley Milgram decided to test how easily ordinary citizens could be influenced by a higher authority to commit atrocities. The experimenters recruited around 40 men using newspaper ads and compensated them financially for participating in the experiment.
Why was the Milgram experiment conducted?
In 1963, the Milgram experiment was conducted to examine the justification for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the Nuremberg War Criminal trials following World War II. The defense of the accused was that they were simply being obedient and following orders from superiors.
What happened to the student in the 'Shock' experiment?
The experimenters assigned each participant the role of “teacher” and told them to ask the “student," a paid actor, certain questions. If the student failed to answer it correctly, the teacher had to administer a shock to the student. After each wrong answer, the shock level incrementally increased, from 15V to 450V. A supervisor was present at the scene to ensure the teacher was following orders. As the experiment proceeded, the student answered many questions incorrectly and the shock level was accordingly increased, and as the shock was administered, the student shouted and pleaded in pain. Above a certain shock-level, he banged on the wall and demanded to be released from the experiment, but the supervisor instructed the teacher to continue. This experiment was repeated multiple times with different scenarios, with the student sitting in different proximities to the teacher, either nearby or in another room. The purpose of the experiment was to test whether the teacher would continue to hurt the student just because the supervisor told him to continue doing so.
Why was the Milgram experiment not representative of the general population?
The Milgram experiment was not representative of the general population because it only consisted of White adult males, who responded to a mail invitation or newspaper ad. So, in terms of research design, the experiment may be flawed, but I believe it is ethically sound.
Was the Milgram experiment ethical?
There is ongoing debate about whether the Milgram experiment was ethical. Opponents argue that because participants were not informed of the experiment’s topic beforehand, it inflicted mental stress and anxiety to the participants.
What is Milgram's interpretation of his research?
Milgram’s interpretation of his research was that everyday people are capable of carrying out unthinkable actions in certain circumstances. His research has been used to explain atrocities such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, though these applications are by no means widely accepted or agreed upon.
What was the most famous experiment of Stanley Milgram?
In the most well-known version of Stanley Milgram's experiment, the 40 male participants were told that the experiment focused on the relationship between punishment , learning, and memory. The experimenter then introduced each participant to a second individual, explaining that this second individual was participating ...
What was the purpose of the Milgram experiment?
The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure. Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor.
Why is Milgram's experiment controversial?
Milgram’s experiment has been widely criticized on ethical grounds. Milgram’s participants were led to believe that they acted in a way that harmed someone else, an experience that could have had long-term consequences. Moreover, an investigation by writer Gina Perry uncovered that some participants appear to not have been fully debriefed after the study —they were told months later, or not at all, that the shocks were fake and the learner wasn’t harmed. Milgram’s studies could not be perfectly recreated today, because researchers today are required to pay much more attention to the safety and well-being of human research subjects.
How many participants did Burger find obeyed?
Burger found that participants obeyed at similar levels as Milgram’s participants: 82.5% of Milgram’s participants gave the learner the 150-volt shock, and 70% of Burger’s participants did the same.
How many teachers were in the experiment room at once?
Another version of the study brought three "teachers" into the experiment room at once. One was a real participant, and the other two were actors hired by the research team. During the experiment, the two non-participant teachers would quit as the level of shocks began to increase. Milgram found that these conditions made the real participant far more likely to "disobey" the experimenter, too: only 10% of participants gave the 450-volt shock to the learner.
Why can't Milgram's studies be recreated?
Milgram’s studies could not be perfectly recreated today, because researchers today are required to pay much more attention to the safety and well-being of human research subjects. Researchers have also questioned the scientific validity of Milgram’s results.
Introduction
- The experimental method is an important tool that allows scientists to make significant discoveries. However, some of the most major findings were made during experiments the ethical side of which remains doubtful. The experiments conducted by Milgram in the 1960s are an example of such studies; their results were among the most significant discoveries about the hu…
Milgram’s Main Experiment
- The main experiment conducted by Milgram (1963) was designed to test the level of naive subjects’ obedience to authority. The subjects were told that the experiment tested the potency of punishment in improving learning capabilities, and were asked to administer electrical shocks to a “learner” (an accomplice of the experimenter). The subject did not know the shocks were false; …
The Ethical Issues of Milgram’s Experiment
- This experiment is considered to be one of the most controversial experiments conducted by social psychologists (Smith & Bond, 1998, p. 22). In many experiments, it is important that subjects are not aware of the nature of the study, so that their natural behaviour might be observed (Orne & Holland, 1968). However, the experiment conducted by Milgr...
Attempts to Replicate Milgram’s Study
- while Using Ethically Approved Methods
There have been numerous attempts to replicate the Milgram’s experiment. However, these attempts often changed some conditions of the original experiment – not only to test the influence of changing different variables but also because of the need to comply with the new et…
Conclusion
- As it can be seen, Milgram’s findings were significant in uncovering some tendencies of human behaviour that are dangerous indeed. His research caused a surge of similar studies, as well as numerous discussions on the ethics of the experimental method. Although many restrictions were imposed on the scientific methods due to ethical considerations, and these restrictions often li…
References
- Benjamin, L. T., Jr., & Simpson, J. A. (2009). The power of the situation: The impact of Milgram’s obedience studies on personality and social psychology. The American Psychologist, 64(1), 12-19. Web. Brannigan, A., Nicholson, I., & Cherry, F. (2015). Introduction to the special issue: Unplugging the Milgram machine. Theory & Psychology, 25(5), 551-563. Herrera, C. D. (2001). Ethics, decepti…