Question

Was Milgram's work ethical in terms of professional scientific conduct? Were the "benefits" obtained from his work enough to offset the "costs"? Were subjects truly debriefed at the end of their participation?

Answer 1

• Milgram's 1963 experiment broke the code of conduct in regard to what constitutes an ethical study in a number of ways, and if presented today, Milgram would likely not gain the approval to carry out his study in the first place.
• The first issue was that Milgram used deception; he thought this to be necessary to help meet his aims in a valid way, and although some levels of deception are sometimes acceptable, in this case not disclosing the true nature of the study led to further issues. Due to this, full informed consent could not be gained and only in a debrief were participants told that the study was not about intelligence, but rather the effects of authority on obedience.
• However, throughout and some time after the experiment, several participants experiences psychological harm as they believed they were seriously harming an individual, and later felt sever guilt that just because they instructed, they would in fact administer fatal electric shocks to another human being.
• Moreover, psychological conduct states that participants should be allowed a right to withdrawm from a study at any given time, however in this experiment, whenever the participant expressed signs of distress and wanting to quit, they were urged to continue by the 'scientist' until they continued, with only a small minority not seeing the experiment all the way to the end.
• Therefore, even though participants did not experience any pain or long-term damage, they were not put in a position where they could give full informed consent, were placed in highly stressful situations and found difficulty in withdraing from such circumstances, making this one of the most unethical experiments in psychological history.
• Milgram suggested that the subjects were "dehoaxed" after the experiments. However, Perry's findings revealed that of the 700 or so people who took part in different variations of his studies between 1961 and 1962, very few were truly debriefed.
• A true debriefing would have involved explaining that the shocks weren't real and that the other person was not injured. Instead, Milgram's sessions were mainly focused on calming the subjects down before sending them on their way. Many left in a state of considerable distress. While the truth was revealed to some months or even years later, many were simply never told a thing.
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