Milgram
SUMMARY OF MILGRAM ARTICLE
The Milgram (1963) article is about an experiment that was conducted on the Yale University campus on obedience. A newspaper ad and mailers were sent out to advertise for participants for an experiment that offered 4.50 just to show up and brought in 40 participants ranging in age, education level and occupation. The participants were told that the study had to do with memory and that one participant would be the learner and the other would be the teacher. The teacher would be responsible for shocking the learner every time that learner got a wrong answer and that each time the learner was shocked, the voltage of that shock would have to increase with the highest level of shock being clearly labeled as dangerous on the fake -but very professional looking- shocking machine. The participants did not know that the learner was a trained person working with the experimenter. Although a low amount of people were predicted to obey the experimenter in giving the more painful shocks, most participants did and over half of them administered shocks all the way up to the highest one.
ISSUES OF RESEARCH ETHICS
There were a lot of things unethical about this experiment. The main one being that the participants were lied to be about what they were participating in. As a researcher it was Milgram 's (1963) job to invent an experiment were his hypothesis could be tested but also were participants would be informed of what they were participating in. This leads to the unethical issue that this experiment caused most of the participants extreme distress, which was an indirect result of them being lied to about the experiment. The fact they that also used the Yale campus and the Yale name of the fliers is also unethical since the article stated that Yale had no hand in the experiment, particularly as a safeguard should the experiment go wrong. This just added even more to the participants ' fake sense of assuredness that the experiment was
The Milgram (1963) article is about an experiment that was conducted on the Yale University campus on obedience. A newspaper ad and mailers were sent out to advertise for participants for an experiment that offered 4.50 just to show up and brought in 40 participants ranging in age, education level and occupation. The participants were told that the study had to do with memory and that one participant would be the learner and the other would be the teacher. The teacher would be responsible for shocking the learner every time that learner got a wrong answer and that each time the learner was shocked, the voltage of that shock would have to increase with the highest level of shock being clearly labeled as dangerous on the fake -but very professional looking- shocking machine. The participants did not know that the learner was a trained person working with the experimenter. Although a low amount of people were predicted to obey the experimenter in giving the more painful shocks, most participants did and over half of them administered shocks all the way up to the highest one.
ISSUES OF RESEARCH ETHICS
There were a lot of things unethical about this experiment. The main one being that the participants were lied to be about what they were participating in. As a researcher it was Milgram 's (1963) job to invent an experiment were his hypothesis could be tested but also were participants would be informed of what they were participating in. This leads to the unethical issue that this experiment caused most of the participants extreme distress, which was an indirect result of them being lied to about the experiment. The fact they that also used the Yale campus and the Yale name of the fliers is also unethical since the article stated that Yale had no hand in the experiment, particularly as a safeguard should the experiment go wrong. This just added even more to the participants ' fake sense of assuredness that the experiment was
References: (APA STYLE) Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371- 378. [word count=798]