Stanley Milgram Essay
1. What does Milgram’s study tell us about human behaviour?
Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the Milgram experiment, study to see the participants' willingness to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that differed with their conscience. The study is used to show the aim that Stanley Milgram himself placed to see the willingness of the participant to obey use pain if one of the participants got an answer wrong. Overall, 65% of the participants gave shocks up to 450 volts (obeyed) and 35% stopped sometime before 450 volts. During the study many participants showed signs of nervousness and tension. Participants sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, dug fingernails into their flesh, and these were typical not …show more content…
However, during the experiment the prods used suggested that withdrawal was not possible. This is ethically incorrect. Even so, we should consider whether the experiment would have been valid if the experimenter kept reminding the participant about his right to withdraw.
A major criticism of Milgram’s study was his unrepresentative sample. Milgram chose to study only American men (thus he was deliberately ethnocentric), but from a variety of backgrounds and different ages. It could be argued that by using men this produced a sample that was biased, or did not reflect the general population. The study was also limited to those people who read the advertisement and were prepared to participate in a laboratory experiment. These men who replied may have been somehow different from the general population.
Another main criticism of Milgram’s experiment was that it was not ecologically valid. It can be argued that Milgram’s work was carried out in an artificial setting and has little relevance to the real
Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the Milgram experiment, study to see the participants' willingness to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that differed with their conscience. The study is used to show the aim that Stanley Milgram himself placed to see the willingness of the participant to obey use pain if one of the participants got an answer wrong. Overall, 65% of the participants gave shocks up to 450 volts (obeyed) and 35% stopped sometime before 450 volts. During the study many participants showed signs of nervousness and tension. Participants sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, dug fingernails into their flesh, and these were typical not …show more content…
However, during the experiment the prods used suggested that withdrawal was not possible. This is ethically incorrect. Even so, we should consider whether the experiment would have been valid if the experimenter kept reminding the participant about his right to withdraw.
A major criticism of Milgram’s study was his unrepresentative sample. Milgram chose to study only American men (thus he was deliberately ethnocentric), but from a variety of backgrounds and different ages. It could be argued that by using men this produced a sample that was biased, or did not reflect the general population. The study was also limited to those people who read the advertisement and were prepared to participate in a laboratory experiment. These men who replied may have been somehow different from the general population.
Another main criticism of Milgram’s experiment was that it was not ecologically valid. It can be argued that Milgram’s work was carried out in an artificial setting and has little relevance to the real