Milgrams Experiment Essay

502 Words3 Pages
Discuss the ethical issues on Milgrams experiment on obedience (12 marks) Ethics are standards which distinguish between what is right and wrong, and psychological studies must comply with certain ethical guidelines. Studies face issues regarding whether the study is acceptable and justified. Some of these guidelines include deception, consent, psychological harm, right to withdraw, confidentiality and a thorough debriefing, which were produced to help psychologists resolve ethical issues in research and protect participants. However, in some cases breaching these guidelines is unavoidable to produce sound results and is therefore justified. Many studies in investigating obedience to authority have been questioned for its ethical issues. Milgram’s study has particularly been criticised for being ethically unacceptable. It involved deception, right to withdraw, consent and psychological harm. Participants were deceived as to the exact nature of the study for which they had volunteered, and by making them believe they were administering real electric shocks to a real participant. However Milgram could not have found results that truly reflected the way people behave in real situations if he had not deceived his participants, all of whom were thoroughly debriefed afterwards. It can also be argued that Milgram did not take adequate measures to protect his participants from the stress and emotional conflict they experienced. Milgram’s defense was that he, and the students and psychiatrists – who had been asked to predict the results of the first experiment – did not expect the results he obtained, and went on to ask whether such criticisms are based as much on the unexpected results as on the procedure itself. It is possible that being involved in the experiment may have had a long-term effect on the participants. Before the experiment they might have considered
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