Describe Milgram's classic obedience study. Was it ethical?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students' examples may vary.

The answer should contain the following information:

In a classic experiment conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, an experimenter told participants to give increasingly stronger shocks to another person as part of a study on learning. In reality, the experiment had nothing to do with learning; the real issue under consideration was the degree to which participants would obey the experimenter's requests. In fact, the "learner" supposedly receiving the shocks was a confederate who never really received any punishment.

Most people who hear a description of Milgram's experiment feel it is unlikely that any participant would give the maximum level of shock-or, for that matter, any shock at all. Even a group of psychiatrists to whom the situation was described predicted that fewer than 2 percent of the participants would fully comply and administer the strongest shocks. However, the actual results contradicted both experts' and nonexperts' predictions. Some 65 percent of the participants eventually used the highest setting on the shock generator-450 volts-to shock the learner. This obedience occurred even though the learner, who had mentioned at the start of the experiment that he had a heart condition, demanded to be released, screaming, "Let me out of here! Let me out of here! My heart's bothering me. Let me out of here!" Despite the learner's pleas, most participants continued to administer the shocks.

The participants, who were extensively interviewed after the experiment, said they obeyed primarily because they believed that the experimenter would be responsible for any potential ill effects that befell the learner. The participants accepted the experimenter's orders, then, because they thought that they personally could not be held accountable for their actions-they could always blame the experimenter.

One need only consider actual instances of obedience to authority to witness some frightening real-life parallels. For instance, after World War II, the major defense that Nazi officers gave to excuse their participation in atrocities during the war was that they were "only following orders." Milgram's experiment, which was motivated in part by his desire to explain the behavior of everyday Germans during World War II, forces one to ask oneself this question: Would one be able to withstand the intense power of authority?

Despite possible ethical concerns about the methods used, Milgram's research remains the strongest laboratory demonstration of obedience. And partial replications of Milgram's work, conducted in an ethically defensible way, find similar results, which add believability to the original work.