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How Did Milgram's Experiments Affect Human Behavior?

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Science is a field full of discovery, and psychology is always looking for answers and studying the mind, and behavior characteristics of individuals in certain settings. Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale in 1961, was unlike any other, in regards to wanting answers to questions that swirled in his mind (Slater 31). And just as others before him, and others after, he wanted to conduct his own experiments. What did Milgram want to prove or disprove, and how he went about it, was it right or wrong in the eyes of ethics? He was intrigued by the capacity of obedience to authority even to the point of thwarting one owns morals.
Milgram grew up in the World War II era, and his family would listen to the radio on a regular …show more content…
Persons Needed for a Study of Memory” (Slater 32). The person that answers the ad is accompanied by an experimenter to a room where they are met by another person. Through a drawing of a piece of paper, rigged to happen the same way every time, the person that has answered the ad becomes the teacher and the other person becomes the learner. The learner is the escorted, along with the teacher into a room that contains an electric chair. The experimenter instructs the teacher to strap down the learner and then apply grease to the hands followed by electrodes. Then the teacher is separated into a different room and it begins. The instructions to the teacher are, to read a series of words over a microphone for the learner to hear, and if the learner responds correctly then the next series of words are read. If the learner is incorrect in the repeating back of the words then the teacher is to press a switch to send volts of electricity to the learner. With each incorrect response the voltage is delivered at a higher level each time. The experiment is rigged, in the fact, that there is no electricity hooked up to either the switchboard or the chair, and the learner is paid to make sounds while the teacher delivers the volts of electricity (Slater 32-38). The whole experiment is observed by Milgram. He is observing the teacher to see at what …show more content…
Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of who decides what is acceptable risk versus benefit? Is it the ones that have a financial tie to the experiment, other professionals in the field of study, or boards that have been set-up for this particular purpose? I agree that risk versus benefit is something that needs to be looked at and certainly is important in the case of Milgram. He was deceptive in his initial process of getting the public to participate. This might not have been the worst part of the experiment but rather it was the way that he ended the experiment with the participants. For some he debriefed them and reassured to them that the shocks and cries for help and pain from the learner were not true but instead acted out, but for others he did not let them know of the deceptiveness until a whole year later. This is where risk vs. benefit enters the stage. Is it ok to deceive someone into thinking that they delivered lethal shocks to another human being when in reality they did nothing of the sorts, and then to find out a year later that this was all a hoax? I do agree with Perry that this kind of mental abuse is not acceptable. It does no benefit to the participants or the experiment to have one believing, that what is seen as a horrible character flaw, not know the truth that harm did not come to the learner.

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