In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment on a group’s obedience to authority. This experiment has encountered intense scrutiny ever since its findings were first published in 1963; many people question the ethics and validity of the experiment. Multitudes of researchers have taken it upon themselves to determine the answers to the questions (McLeod).
Based on new guidelines for ethics, Stanley Milgram’s experiment on the obedience to authority was neither ethical nor valid.
Controversy in the ethics of the experiment comes from the deception used and psychological harm experienced by some of the participants. Milgram believed that for the experiment to be authentic, deception was inevitable. He also sent out a questionnaire to his participants afterwards to see the effectiveness of the deception. The majority of the participants, 83. 7 percent, stated they were glad they had participated while 1. 3 percent would rather have not taken the experiment.
Some of the participants also displayed physical signs of distress, but Milgram stated the symptoms were short term and the participants were better after they had been debriefed about the experiment (McLeod).
Opponents of the ethics of Milgram’s experiment believe that the amount of stress caused by the experiment deems it unethical (Controversy: Ethics in Experiments).
Many participants experienced trembling, stuttering and nervous laughter; three unfortunate people even suffered from seizures (McLeod).
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Obedience is when someone does what a person or rule tells him or her to do. People tend to follow orders of an authority, and this can sometimes result in a negative effect. An example would include all those people who were obedient to Hitler, and killed innocent people in the Holocaust. For instance, Stanley Milgram, in his article, Perils of Obedience, writes about his experiment, of how ...
Other participants may have had psychological pain knowing they could have killed a person. Questioning themselves over their morals could also lead to emotional distress (Controversy: Ethics in Experiments).
The deception was essential part of the experiment, but the emotional distress endured by the participant was excessive. An experiment where a person could have potentially been harmed for a long period of time should never had been performed. The deception of having a person think they killed someone could have lasting effects on their psyche.
Milgram observed one participant as “twitching, stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse (qtd. In Was Milgram’s Research Ethical).
”Most of the participants were happy with the outcome of the experiment, but the potential for lasting psychological damage leads it to be unethical. Based on three sectors of validity, internal, external and environmental, the experiment only accomplished internal validity. Many people question whether the lab setting of the experiment could be transferred to the natural world.
These people argue that a participant’s mindset and morals changes as they enter the experimental. This validity question also leads to the external validity question. If people change their actions because they are a part of an experiment, then Milgram could not have reasonably inferred that people would obey the authority figure no matter the cost (Mook, pages 385-386)? The participants could also have realized they were being tricked and could have just played along with the experiment (Orne and Holland).
Because internal validity is maintained, some believe Milgram’s experiment is valid.
The ability of the test to be replicated accomplishes some internal validity. The setting and the factors tested could easily be tested again by another researcher (Samson, page 8).
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Chap 10: 16. Which of the following is true of gatekeepers? a. They are not bound to ethical duties. b. Investors and boards are examples of gatekeepers. c. They serve as intermediaries between market participants. d. They are not responsible for ensuring conformance to fairness in the marketplace. Answer: c 17. Which of the following rely on gatekeepers for fair and effective functioning of ...
The questionnaire used by Milgram can also be used to support the experiment’s validity. Considering the participants truly thought that they were tricked, the results of the experiment would not have been tampered with (McLeod).
Since Milgram’s experiment is only able to pass one sector of the three sectors of validity, the results of the experiment are not valid.
Milgram was unable to test all of the factors of the experiment. He did not allow people to quit the experiment until the fifth time they ask. This act can lead to people believing they have no way out of the experiment. The experiment is biased in that it only has male participants, and Milgram hand selected them (McLeod).
Although the experiment can be replicated obtaining internal validity, it is impossible to tell if these are the correct results because Milgram only tested a few factors. This experiment is ultimately unable to be tested because of all the factors that must go into it.
No experiment could be produced to accurately test the obedience to authority while maintaining an ethical nature and validity. Milgram’s experiment has faced years of questions of whether it is ethical or valid. The deception and psychological harm in the experiment questions its ethics; the lack of external and environmental validity questions its validity. Although Milgram did maintain internal validity in the experiment, and most of the participants were glad they participated, the experiment in the end was neither ethical nor valid.
