Milgram Experiment
This week in TOK we were each assigned to research a different topic related to human sciences. I was given the task to research the Milgram experiment and find out why it was so controversial. So this is what I found:
The Milgram experiment was done by the American Psychological Association. The aim of this investigation was to measure the willingness of human beings to obey an authority figure. The way that the experiment worked is that they hired actors to play "students" and asked volunteers to play the role of a "teacher". The student and the teacher were placed in different rooms where they couldn't see each other but could still hear one another. The teacher gave electric shocks to the student and each time made them stronger. The teacher had a control that indicated the level of strength in the shock that was given to the student. Each time the teacher gave the student an electric shock the student complained and screamed because they were pretending to be in pain. However the teacher didn't know that the students weren't really feeling the shocks. There was a point where the teacher hesitated in given the next shock because of the students respond. The scientists in the room with the teacher then insisted and assured them that they would not be held responsible for the students pain. The teacher then proceeded with the experiment. The results of the experiment was that the majority of people tend to obey authority when they are assured to not be held responsible for their actions.
This study was controversial because "people were placed in a very tense situation in which many felt a great deal of stress. The research was criticized because its not ethical to design a study which intends to create this kind of stress."
The Milgram researchers then defended themselves by saying that it was not intended to create stress and that no psychological harm was made to anyone. In fact some time later they made a survey to see how the participants of the experiment felt about their participation and this is what they said; 83.7% was glad/very glad to have been in the experiment, 15.1% was neither sorry nor glad to have been in the experiment and 01.3% was sorry/very sorry to have been in the experiment.
Now that you know what happened, what do you think? Should the Milgram experiment performed by Yale University be held responsible for being unethical or not? Thanks for reading!
-Melissa S.
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