Do you think Milgram experiment was ethical? Why or why not? You may want to start this by explaining the experiment and what happened during the experiment. The Milgram experiment was to determine the obedience of subjects, that was conducted by Stanley Milgram. This experiment was to test a subjects “conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience” (McLeod, 2007). With this, Milgram was able to determine conformity of people to “go with the flow” and how the subject felt the need to be liked in the experiment, while being in control as the “authority” figure. Milgram performed this experiment to find how people were going to behave when told that they had to perform an experiment that would allow them to be in control of another …show more content…
Normative organization has an intangible benefit, a volunteer basis of membership, and shared affinity and people usually have shared interests. Coercive organization has a corrective benefit, a required membership, and no affinity and people are usually pushed to join. Utilitarian organization has a tangible benefit, a contractual membership, and some affinity and people usually join because of a specific reward. Although all these organization have pieces that many people pick and choose from, there can be one set way that is more efficient in the pursuit of goals than the others (Monnier, …show more content…
In my opinion, being forced into joining a specific group, such as religion or politics, is detrimental to society, even though this organization is more directed to places such as prisons and mental institutions (Monnier, 2011). When people are forced into changing ideals and goals because a specific group, it forces goals to change to the wants and desires of that group. It no longer is the individual who is deciding what the goal is, it is the group. It can be beneficial, like to those who are in prisons and mental institutions, but when you are looking at how this specific organization is formatted, the changing of goals may not be completely beneficial because of the individual. Some people who are forced into this organization are there for things that are wrongful to societal norms that are dictated by those who are in charge of the organization. If someone goes to prison for downloading files that they for not permitted to, that is only going against the dictated laws that are formed by the societal norms. They many have made illegal movie showings their goal, but being forced to join this organization will not format their goals to be anything more amazing other than that their goal is to not download movies illegally anymore. This organization is more biased in my opinion and is based on a groups goals that they make others follow when they go against the specific goals. This would be the least efficient
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure. 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 is the real subject and the learner is merely an actor.
“Ethical Issues of the Milgram Experiment.” Associated Content. Yahoo, 8 November 2008. Web. 12 October 2011.
A former Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, administered an experiment to test the obedience of "ordinary" people as explained in his article, "The Perils of Obedience". An unexpected outcome came from this experiment by watching the teacher administer shocks to the learner for not remembering sets of words. By executing greater shocks for every wrong answer created tremendous stress and a low comfort levels within the "teacher", the one being observed unknowingly, uncomfortable and feel the need to stop. However, with Milgram having the experimenter insisting that they must continue for the experiments purpose, many continued to shock the learner with much higher voltages.The participants were unaware of many objects of the experiment until
Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people with abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own nature instinct. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world example, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures. Stanley Milgram shows the reader how big of an impact authority figures have but fails to answer the bigger question. Which is more important, obedience or morality?
In “ Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments On Obedience” by Diana Baumrind, and in “Obedience” by Ian Parker, the writers claim that Milgram’s Obedience is ethically wrong and work of evil because of the potential harm that the subjects of the experiment had. While Baumrind’s article focused only on the Subjects of the experiment, Parker’s article talked about both immediate and long term response to experiment along with the reaction of both the general public and Milgram’s colleagues, he also talks about the effect of the experiment on Milgram himself. Both articles discuss has similar points, they also uses Milgram’s words against him and while Baumrind attacks Milgram, Parker shows the reader that experiment
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
Those participating were also led to believe that their contribution went to a worthy cause – to advance knowledge and understanding of learning processes. They were also told that the victim (the learner), was taking part voluntarily meaning they had an obligation to fulfill even if it became unpleasant (also applies to the teacher). Additionally, the volunteers were being paid, which created a further sense of commitment to the investigation. Those who took part also had little knowledge about how psychological experiments ran, as Milgram’s study was most likely the first one they ever partook in. Therefore, they had little knowledge about the rights and expectations of the situation, and felt more confined than if they had been through a similar experience prior.
Obedience is the requirement of all mutual living and is the basic element of the structure of social life. Conservative philosophers argue that society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the priority of the individuals' conscience. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, designed an experiment that forced participants to either violate their conscience by obeying the immoral demands of an authority figure or to refuse those demands. Milgram's study, reported in "The Perils of Obedience" suggested that under a special set of circumstances the obedience we naturally show authority figures can transform us into agents of terror or monsters towards humanity.
In finding that people are not naturally aggressive. Milgram now alters the experiment to find out why do people act the way they do. He compiled the experiment to answer, why do people obey authority, even when the actions are against their own morals.
Obedience is when you do something you have been asked or ordered to do by someone in authority. As little kids we are taught to follow the rules of authority, weather it is a positive or negative effect. Stanley Milgram, the author of “The perils of Obedience” writes his experiment about how people follow the direction of an authority figure, and how it could be a threat. On the other hand Diana Baumrind article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience,” is about how Milgram’s experiment was inhumane and how it is not valid. While both authors address how people obey an authority figure, Milgram focuses more on how his experiment was successful while Baumrind seems more concerned more with how Milgram’s experiment was flawed and
In the early 1960’s, Stanley Milgram (1963) performed an experiment titled Behavioral Study of Obedience to measure compliance levels of test subjects prompted to administer punishment to learners. The experiment had surprising results. Purpose of the research? Stanley Milgram’s (1963), Behavioral Study of Obedience measured how far an ordinary subject would go beyond their fundamental moral character to comply with direction from authority to punish another person, and at what point would they refuse to obey and end their participation. The subjects and methods used.
In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University Psychologist conducted a variety of social psychology experiments on obedience to authority figures. His experiments involved three individuals, one of them was a volunteer who played the role of the teacher, one was an actor who played the role of the student, and one was the experimenter who played the role of the authority. The teacher was instructed by the authority to administrate shocks to the student (who claimed to have a heart condition) whenever they answered a question incorrectly. The voltage of the shock would go up after every wrong answer. The experimenter would then instruct the teacher to administrate higher voltages even though pain was being imposed. The teacher would then have to make a choice between his morals and values or the choice of the authority figure. The point of the experiment was to try to comprehend just how far an individual would continue when being ordered by an individual in a trench coat to electrically shock another human being for getting questions incorrect. The experiment consisted of administrating pain to different people and proved that ordinary people will obey people with authority. Some of the various reasons are that the experimenter was wearing a trench coat, fear of the consequences for not cooperating, the experiments were conducted in Yale University a place of prestige, and the authority f...
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 general goal of the experiment was to see how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict another person just because he or she was ordered to do so by an experimental scientist. In his article, "The Perils of Obedeince", Milgram concluded his analysis of the experiment by saying "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority," (Milgram, 1974, p76). Milgram summarized that obedience is a basic behavior element in social life that is deeply ingrained that it override people from acting according to the ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct (Milgram, 1973, p62). The way obedience is set in the modern society leads to the loss of personal responsibility from ordinary citizens. In the society, people are taught to behave legally and morally. However, Milgram argued that learning ethics does not necessarily determine what people will actually do in their real-life situations (Milgram, 1973, p76). To check the experiment 's accuracy, similar experiments were held in different countries such as South Africa,