Milgram's Obedience Study Ethics

Discuss the ethics of Milgram's obedience study.

In the years 1961-1962, Stanley Milgram - Yale University psychologist, conducted the first of the obedience experiments, which were also called "shock" studies. The research was invented to check if the people would be ready to harm somebody just to meet the requirements of the experiment. This essay will be focused on the ethical side of the study. Firstly, it will be presented how the experiment was performed, by describing all of the necessary details. The two next paragraphs will be devoted to the reflections of distinguishing whether the experiment was ethically valid or not.

To begin with, all of the participants of the experiment were found by placing an add in the newspaper, which content was, briefly, "We
People who took part in the study were different gender, race, age and had different levels of education. The point of this false experiment was to check if the student would learn more if he would be punished for all of the wrong answers. However, the study was made on an another case, obedience. The experiment consisted of placing a random person (who was the teacher) in front of the shock machine. If the pupil's answer was wrong, the teacher gave him a shock, as many answers were wrong, as much higher was the voltage of the shock. The research was made on the case of the teacher's behaviour - if he will stop harming the pupil or not, therefore if he will be obedient to the experimenter ( the person who was supposed to control the experiment) - the person who sits in the same room as the teacher and tells him what should he do. The student was an actor who was told to act