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How did the milgram experiment break ethical rules
How did the milgram experiment break ethical rules
How did the milgram experiment break ethical rules
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This study is criticized because of the ethical concerns about the experiment. One of the issues was on deception. “Deception occurs when subjects are misled about research procedures to determine how they would react to the treatment if they were not research subjects” (Bachman and Schutt, 2014, p.62). In Milgram’s experiment participants believed they were shocking a real person. Another worry was about protecting the research participants. Because of the high stress level situations, this may cause psychological harm. Milgram defends himself by saying he debriefed the participants fully after the experiment and continued to follow up even after the experiment was over. With that being said, I can see where others are coming from about this
During the twentieth century, Harry Harlow performed one of the most controversial experiments that led to a scientific breakthrough concerning the parent-child relationship. It paved the way for understanding terms such as secure, insecure, ambivalent, and disorganized relationships (Bernstein, 2014, 364). During the course of this study, Harlow separated baby monkeys from their birth mothers and isolated them in frightening environments. According to the video “H.H. Overview”, this proved the monkey’s preference for a comforting mother versus a nutritional one. However, this raises the question: can his experiments be deemed ethical, or did his scientific inquiry overstep boundaries?
In her excerpt, Baumrind discusses the potential dangers of the aftereffects on the participants of the experiment. On many occasions she suggests that these people are subjects of a cruel and unethical experiment, and suffer from harm to their self-image and emotional disruption (227). She also calls Milgram’s experiment a “game” (Baumrind 225); this illustrates her negative outtake on the experiment which is seen throughout the article. On the contrary, Parker discusses the aftereffects on Milgram himself. He expresses how the experiment, although it shows light to what extent of obedience a person may travel, ruined Milgram’s reputation. Parker also cites many notable authors and psychologists and their reactions to Milgram’s experiment. Despite their differences, Baumrind and Parker are able to find common ground on a few issues concerning the Milgr...
Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a study at Yale University in 1962, in an attempt to understand how individuals will obey directions or commands. This study become known as the Milgram Obedience Study. Stanley Milgram wanted to understand how normal people could become inhumane, cruel, and severely hurt other people when told to carry out an order, in a blind obedience to authority. This curiosity stemmed from the Nazi soldiers in Germany, and how their soldiers could do horrible acts to the Jews. To carry out his study, Dr. Milgram created a machine with an ascending row of switches that were marked with an increasing level of voltage that could be inflicted on another person. Then, he gathered forty random males between the ages of 20 and 50 that lived in the local area. He then told them that this experiment was to see how people learned through pain or punishment rather than without. The teacher volunteer would see the other volunteer or victim put on electronic straps and would not be able to see the person being shocked but could hear them. This setup was fake and the person being shocked had pre-recorded answers and reactions to the ascending row of buttons. The teacher volunteer would ask questions through a headset to the victim volunteer, and whenever a question was answered incorrectly, the teacher would increase the level of
A man is running late to work one day when he passes by a homeless person asking for help. This man and many others usually consider this particular man to be generous, but since he is late, he ignores the homeless person and continues on his way. One can assume that if he had the time, he would have helped. Does that matter, though, seeing as in that situation, he did not in fact help? Scenarios like this supports Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett’s idea that it is the situation that influences a person’s behavior, not he or she’s individual conscience. Although a person’s individual conscience could play a part in how one behaves in a given scenario, ultimately, the “situational variable” has more impact on the actions of the person than he or she’s morals.
...e maximum shock level dropped significantly. The more official the experimenter looked, the more people would reach the maximum shock level. Stanley Milgram’s findings were groundbreaking. He found that humans will comply and obey ones orders than previously thought. His experiment has become one of the more well known and influential social psychology experiments completed.
However, all of the participants continued to administer up to three-hundred volts. These were everyday “normal” people that functioned successfully in society. Slater had the opportunity to interview one of the participants of Milgram’s experiment, one which happened to follow through with the shocks all the way to the very last one. During the interview the participant stated, “You thought you were really giving shocks, and nothing can take away from you the knowledge of how you acted” (Slater, 59). These words came from the mouth of an “average joe” that never knew what he was capable of before the experiment. With these words, we are reminded that we are not as “nice” as we’d like to think we
In the chapter Obscura, Milgram’s experiment of compelling participants to shock other people with what they believed to be potentially deadly amounts of electricity was, and is, viewed as controversial. The controversies were based upon moral, methodological and transferable-relevancy arguments. There were claims that Milgram himself was immoral, and that his experiments illustrated him as such. There were other claims that the environment and circumstances set by the experiment were so linear that they could not possibly represent the complexities we all face in daily life. Whatever the flaws of the experiment or experimenter may be, I think there are moral lessons that this controversy helps reinforce.
The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
He believes the scientific advancements from Milgram’s experiment outweigh the temporary emotional harm to the volunteers of Milgram’s experiment. Also Herrnstein points out that Milgram’s experiment was created to show how easily humans are deceived and manipulated even when they do not realize the pain they are causing. We live in a society and culture where disobedience is more popular than obedience; however, he believed the experiment was very important and more experiments should be done like it, to gain more useful information. The experiment simply would not have been successful if they subjects knew what was actually going to happen, Herrnstein claims. He believes the subject had to be manipulated for the experiment to be successful. “A small temporary loss of a few peoples privacy seems a bearable price for a large reduction in
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University wanted to study and observe how people would react to authority if asked to continue on a task even if it meant hurting another human being. The experiment first began at night in a small shadowy room. For the experiment, it required three people, there was first the volunteer which was a random person from the street who was considered the teacher in the experiment. Then their was the two actors who Milgram had payed them to be in the experiment, one of the two actors was the leaner who was strapped to the electric
The experiments can actually be viewed thank to a documentary called “Obedience”, in this documentary you are able to view how the experiments were carried out and even better the subjects reactions to the experimenter and the student. The subjects reactions ranged from excess sweating, nervous laughter, and even twitches as the subject faced the cries of the student and the cold prodding of the experimenter. The results of the experiments were for lack of a better word shocking. In the first experiment Remote condition testing was used in which the subject could not hear the student-65% of subjects continued to the maximum shock (Milgram, Obedience 94). The 2nd experiment tested Voice-Feedback condition in which the students cries could be heard, but not seen-62.5% made it to the maximum shock potential; in the 3rd experiment they tested Proximity condition in which the student could be heard and was placed only a few feet away from the subject-40% reached maximum shock potential; the 4th and final experiment tested Touch-Proximity condition in which the student not only could be heard and seen, but actually had physical contact with the subject-30% reached maximum shock potential (Milgram, Obedience 95-96). From the above experiments Milgram demonstrated that a negative correlation between authority and proximity of a person being abused. The experiment was conducted in other areas with different subject pools, and they produced similar results, thus illustrating the validity of Milgram’s experiment (Rathus
The Milgram Experiment A lesson in depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority The aftermath of the Holocaust and the events leading up to World War II, the world was stunned with the happenings in Nazi German and their acquired surrounding territories that came out during the Eichmann Trials. Eichmann, a high ranking official of the Nazi Party, was on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The questions is, "Could it be that Eichmann, and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Stanley Milgram answered the call to this problem by performing a series of studies on the Obedience to Authority.
First, the participants should be given the chance to decide if they want to partake in the experiment. The participants could be under age or concerned for their safety which are valid reasons for them not to participate in the study. It does not matter if the study was single blinded, it was vital to tell the participants that they are being studied (Cicarelli and White, 2015, p. 33). Second, participants are not allowed to withdraw from the study. Due to the participants not being informed of the study they are unable to withdraw. Third, investigators do not inform the participants of any risks. While the researchers do not use equipment that could cause bodily harm the participants can suffer a greater risk that involves their privacy. Privacy helps people maintain who they are as an induvial and when that is violated they lose the ability to trust not only others, but themselves in certain situations. Lastly, the investigators do not debrief participants. Debriefing is a critical part of any experience because it not only allows the experimenter to share their findings, but it gives participants the opportunity to ask questions. Due to the importance of ethics in an experiment I would correct the four violations that were discussed
The Monster study is speech impediment experiment that was done on the children that lived in the orphanage. This experiment was conducted to find out if stuttering was inherited or did environment play a key factor. Wendell Johnson was the speech pathologist that conducted this study to find the cause and cure for stuttering. This study violated a lot of ethical issues because the children were psychological harm, informed consent was not given and the subjects were deceived. Wendell Johnson had a biased opinion in this study because he was a stutter himself and was desperate for a cure. In this paper, I will discuss the background of this experiment and the violations of ethics that were done in this study.
Unethical experiments have occurred long before people considered it was wrong. The protagonist of the practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study ( Vollmann 1448 ).The reasons for the experiments were to understand, prevent, and treat disease, and often there is not a substitute for a human subject. This is true for study of illnesses such as depression, delusional states that manifest themselves partly by altering human subjectivity, and impairing cognitive functioning. Concluding, some experiments have the tendency to destroy the lives of the humans that have been experimented on.