Seminar assignments - Ethical Issues - Stanley Milgram PDF

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Ethical Issues - Stanley Milgram...

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Michelle Pasztor - CRM 4303A Professor: Laura Shantz February 12, 2015 Ethical Issues - Stanley Milgram Some major ethical problems/issues/concerns for the study: - Psychological damages to the participants asked to cause pain to others and seeing another human withering in pain at the hands of electric shock they are administering. Being responsible for someone else’s unbearable pain should not be experienced. - Emotional stress even after the experiment has ended - some feeling embarrassment at their reactions (i.e. laughing fit). - Stressing out the participants during the time of the study (it was not a harmless observation but rather one that caused physical symptoms [i.e. trembling, sweating, etc] among those asked to obey orders). Milgram even states that these levels of distress are rarely seen in sociopsychological laboratory studies (p. 376). - The participants in the survey should be allowed to leave the study at any time, but instead were given cues to continue even after signs of distress were seen. - Since they are paid for the experiment, they feel a sense of duty to continue. - Milgram admitted to the study possibly being traumatic before it took place, yet continued his study. It is not ethical to put innocent people in traumatic situations. Do the ends justify the means in this case? The result: showing the shocking and disturbing truths of human nature. Ethical grey areas/breaches/lapses: - May devalue obedience or shine a negative light on such behaviour, even though Milgram points out that it is necessary for all societies to have some sort of control (p. 371). - Deceiving the participant into thinking they were actually harming the “trained confederate,” begs the question: is deception necessary for research? Deception is seen many times through-

out the experiment: the role picking is rigged, the experimenter is an actor — not someone of authority, the purpose of the experiment is false, the pain felt by the learner is not real, the machine is made to look authentic when it is fake, and the laboratory is intended to look professional and is in Yale University for the purpose of implying the importance of the study from a reputable university. - Humanizes Nazi soldiers indicating that anyone can be manipulated into causing harm when being asked to by a person in authority - providing an excuse for despicable behaviour by explaining it through human nature’s need to obey....