Milgram - ethical?

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The Milgram study, conducted in 161-16, shocked and fascinated the

scientific community with not only its disturbing findings, but also with its

questionable experimental methods. The experiment in itself consisted of

placing an individual in a situation in which they would be forced to choose

either to obey or disobey commands given by an authoritative person that were

contrary to their own morals, sense of socially acceptable behaviour and

humanity. This essay will concentrate on whether the study was of great

scientific and moral benefits or if the costs and potential harm to the

participants were but one factor in making the study an unethical disgrace.

A major factor to the argument of the studys lack of ethics is the intensive

emotional distress and deep conflict, which the participants were subject to,

due to the research procedure. The research procedure called for participants

(or teachers) to give learners electric shocks of increasing voltage when a

wrong answer was given to their question, increasing from 15 volts to,

eventually, 450 volts, with warnings such as Danger severe shock amongst the

descriptions. As the experiment went on and the voltages increased, subjects

began to show signs of being highly disturbed and distressed. Milgram

noted, Persons were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, and

groan as they found themselves increasingly implicated in the experimental

conflict. (Milgram, 165, cited in Public and Private Conformity). These

actions show how deeply distressed the participants were. The participants

themselves questioned the ethics of the study at the time. Milgram described

instances where subjects became engrossed in the technical machinery, possibly

seeing themselves as mere technicians so as to transfer ethical responsibility

to the experimenter, (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 174). Milgram termed

this an agentic state, the participants stop seeing themselves as responsible

and see themselves as an agent for another, i.e. the experimenter. Milgram

also used the term Counteranthropomorphism - where subjects come to view the

experiment as an entity unto itself, divorced from human control. The

participants dehumanised the learners, muttering things such as why doesnt

the dumb guy get it right?.

In each experiment, subjects averted their eyes (and often their heads -

sometimes in an awkward and conspicuous manner) from the subject (Milgram,

174). The fact that they were causing someone pain was extremely distasteful

to the participants to the extreme that they went to ridiculous lengths to

avoid looking at the consequences of what they had done, though they continued

to give shocks.

All these factors combine to make the study unethical in some views; as such

profound distress cannot be forgotten or assuaged by merely being told that the

whole study was a deception. After the experiment was concluded, there was

reconciliation between the teacher and learner to prove no harm was done and a

debriefing from the experimenter, to help participants understand what the

study was actually about. There was no recorded psychological support for any

lasting effects that may have been caused by the experiment, which counts

against the study as the participants long-term sanity is vital. Although

participants underwent highly emotional distress during the experiment, 8.7%

of the subjects involved indicated they were happy to have participated, whilst

a mere 1.% admitted to being sorry to have participated, (Milgram, 164).

Though many find the use of electrical shocks to be abhorrent, electric shocks

are not a foreign concept to psychological experiments. It is widely accepted

that certain levels of harmless pain is a small price to pay for scientific

knowledge and new discoveries. Thus, Milgram deemed participants emotional

distress as necessary pain, classing it as an unforeseen by-product of the

studys scientific inquiry. In reference to the profoundly disturbed

behaviour, Milgram said; Momentary excitement is not the same as harm (174,

Milgram, cited - Obedience and Civilization, Mixon).

Within the scientific community, the studys ethics were questioned by many

psychologists at the time, one of which was Diana Baumrind, who had her

critique of the studys ethics published in the American Psychologist in

164, with Milgram replying in the same issue. It was later revealed that

Professor Baumrind has considerable difficulty publishing her 164 paper and

no success at all in publishing a rebuttal to Milgrams reply (Mixon, 18,

Obedience and Civilization). If more critiques of Milgrams study were

published at the time, then perhaps public perception of Milgrams work would

have been different. People have challenged the ethics on these grounds, but

it is possible these arguments are wrong.

It is feasible that the study wasnt as unethical as was first thought because,

during the actual experiment, the experimenter accidentally gives away a vital

truth - that the shocks are harmless. Through their experimenters behaviour

and body language, subjects may have assumed that they knew for a fact that the

learner was not being harmed, yet were unsure, where-upon the tense behaviour

showed through. This was proven by the fact that if the experimenter behaved

as if surprised by the learners outcries at the shocks, as in three

experiments, all participants disobeyed the experimenter. Within a deception

study such as this, where the participants do not know the true nature of the

study, it is hard to know whether the participants would be at risk as the

results are as yet unknown. Milgram was surprised at the level of obedience he

gained in the experiment, so he did not knowingly put the participants at risk;

therefore, the study is not entirely unethical.

Despite the research procedures questionable ethics, the findings and

conclusions of the study have been praised by many. In view of the study,

which is supposed to be analogous to Nazi Germany, the Nazi war crimes are not

difficult to comprehend. Milgram himself suggested that one of the major

factors accounting for the Holocaust was the willingness of human beings to

obey authorities even when obedience is wrong. This was proven by the fact

that the experiment was repeated many times, with different groups of people,

yet the results stayed the same. Whilst Nazis had the excuse that they

believed that killing Jews was right, or failing that they could claim to fear

the wrath of superiors due to disobeying commands, Milgrams subjects suffered

no penalty for refusing to obey. This was a giant step, because it revealed

that fear and belief were not the only motivating factors in obedience, they

showed that normal people could be made to act destructively without threat and

also that persons need not be evil to act in destructive and inhumane ways.

Milgrams experiment is important as it shows that that in a concrete

situation with powerful social constraints, our moral sense can easily be

trampled. (Blass, 00).

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