Milgram Study

The ethical violations found in the original experiment (1962) included participants (teacher) giving other participants (learner) dangerous electrical shocks at a very high voltage increasing all the way up to 450 volts. The experimenter (authority) informed both the teacher and the learner participants that although the volts may be painful, they are not dangerous. Even though the “teacher” could hear the “learner” yell and scream as they got shocked each time, the “teacher” continued with the experiment because the experimenter (authority) told them they had no choice but to continue with the experiment. The point of this experiment is basically to see how far people will go and follow directions given by authority even when they believe they are doing sometime wrong.

Ethical violations of the 2007 replication by Dr. Berger was very similar to the original experiment. However, instead of the volts increasing to 450, in Dr. Berger’s experiment the volts only increased to 150 in order to reduce the stress of the “teachers” and he used women in his experiement. Although the “teacher” was given the choice to be done with the experiment whenever they want, the experimenter still insisted they should go on with the next question. Dr. Berger found that even though women are seen as more compassionate than men, women were more likely to continue up to the 150 volts than men were. This has much to do with the fact that a male was the authority and the women did not want o look weak or did not want to give up because of that. I believe that if the authority was a woman, more women would leave the experiment.

The reactions and comments from the participants in the videos were very similar in both experiments. Many of the teacher participants would laugh out of nervousness when hearing the learner participant yelling with pain after being shocked. Almost every teach participant turned and looked at the experimenter after the first painful shock was given. Basically