Evaluating Stanley Milgram's Study Into Obedience

Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist whose research has been justified because of the knowledge psychologists have gained about why people obey. One of his most famous studies was conducted in 1963 on obedience. Obedience is compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another's authority. Milgram wanted to investigate why the German soldiers were very obedient to their authority figures and superiors and if that is an explanation for their mass killings in World War ll. The aim of Milgram’s study into obedience in 1963 was to see how far people would go in obeying instructions even if it involved harming another person. He was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing horrible acts. The volunteers that were recruited for this experiment were 40 males from 20-50 years old. There were two participants for each trail, one was a volunteer and the other was a confederate. There was also an
experimenter who dressed up in a white lab coat, but he was actually an actor. The two participants drew lots to determine who would be the learner and who would be the teachers, but both of the lots said teacher and the confederate would act as if his said learner. The learner had to memorize some information and then the teacher would test them on this information and administer an electric shock if they answered incorrectly. The learner would give mainly wrong answers on purpose so the teacher would administer a shock and increase the voltage with every wrong answer. The results from this experiment showed that 65% of the participants (teachers) administered the highest shock possible, 450 volts, which would be extremely painful and harmful to the learner. Another shocking finding is that 100% of the teachers administered at least 300 volts, which would damage a human. From these results we can conclude that normal people are likely to follow instructions from an authority figure, even if it involves killing or seriously harming a human being. Obedience is a part of our nature because we are always told to listen to our parents, teachers and authority figures. There are many reasons why people obey. One reason is people listen to and trust authority figures and in this experiment the “experimenter” wore a white lab coat and that symbolizes scientific expertise and to the teachers that made him have more authority than they did, so they obeyed him. The uniform of an authority figure can give them more status. This is proved to affect obedience because when the experimenter dressed up in regular clothing obedience levels dropped. Also people tend to obey more if they are being told to do something that they can see as morally right or is legally based and since this was a scientific experiment they believed that was the case. The study was conducted at an important place that has a high social status and that would make people feel more comfortable to obey orders from someone there versus at an old abandoned building. The study was conducted at Yale University, which people see as important so they would easily obey orders while there. This is proved when the study location was moved and the obedience levels dropped. There were many ethical issues occurring during this experiment.
One of these ethical issues is deception. The teachers were under the impression that the learner was an actual participant and not an actor. The teacher also believed that the learner was receiving electrical shocks and he was not. The protection of participants was also not something that Milgram was concerned about because the participants were put under extremely stressful situations that could have caused psychological damage. The participants were also denied their right to withdrawal for sometime because when they asked to leave the experimenter told them to carry on. Milgram also did not fully inform the participants about what they were trying to find out from the experiment. Milgram dealt with these problems by fully debriefing the participants after the experiment by telling them about the experiment and showing them the learner to show them that no harm was done. Milgram also followed up after a while to ensure that no harm was
done. This experiment was conducted in a controlled lab environment and some would argue that because it is an artificial situation it couldn’t be used to in real world scenarios. Also the participants were volunteers that chose themselves by reading a newspaper article and this could mean that the participant’s results should not be used to generalize an entire population. The study also only involved 40 men so does that mean the results can be generalized for both men and women or would a study with only women yield different results. This experiment has been replicated many times in many different parts of the world and the results are usually more or less the same. I believe that these results can be used to represent an entire population because the experiment was repeated so many times and the results are generally the same as the original experiment. I believe that Miglram’s research into obedience is justified because of the knowledge psychologists have gained about why people obey. What Milgram did to complete these studies can be overlooked because it has given psychologists valuable insight into why humans obey.