Question

Discuss how members of a military unit could openly bring themselves to kill some individual(s) and not feel any sense of deviance or criminal wrongdoing for the act. Be sure to include ideas from the work of Stanley Milgram in your answer. In addition, if you were a participant in Milgram’s research on obedience, how far do you think you would go in carrying out “orders”? What were some of the potential ethical problems with the experimenter’s manipulation of the subjects?

Answer 1

Members of a military unit could openly bring themselves to kill some individual(s) and not feel any sense of deviance or criminal wrongdoing for the act due to conformity and based on the Stanley Milgram experiments it can be explained that this happens due to social influence being strong and people obeying orders even when it causes them distress. If I were a participant in Milgram’s research on obedience I would go until the very end as I confirm and comply with my boss a lot in my job. Some of the potential ethical problems with the experimenter’s manipulation of the subjects in Milgram’s research experiments are; fully informed consent was not gained – subjects believed the study was about human learning. The participants were deceived: they were lead to believe that the shocks were real, that the confederate was real and that the drawing of lots was also real. The right to withdraw was given but due to the prompts are given by the experimenter, the participants felt obliged to stay.