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How Far Do You Agree With Milgram's Experiment

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How Far Do You Agree With Milgram's Experiment
Milgram’s aim was to research how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII. (McLeod 2007)

The first ethical dilemma with Milgram's experiment is deception. The experimenter deceived the participants, who were made to believe that they were truly inflicting pain on the learners and were purposely put in a position of high stress. Some teachers even believed they had badly hurt, or even killed the learner, causing a lot of distress (Nairne 435) (http://smilgram.weebly.com/ethical-concerns.html, 2014)

Consent-Participants volunteered for the study, so they did at least agree to take part. It can be argued that this is not good enough and that informed consent must be given. Whether participants did have a right to withdraw is a complicated issue. When the participants expressed a wish for the experiment to be stopped, the experimenter ordered “the teacher to continue with the procedure with disregard of the learner’s protest s” (Milgram 1963). …show more content…
However, In Milgram’s Defence, Milgram did not know what was going to happen to the participants health because he could not have predicted their levels of stress and 80% of participants said they were glad to have taken part. (A Level Revision,
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