The Ethics of Milgram, Zimbardo and Hofling. Was it worth it?
The Ethics of Milgram, Zimbardo and Hofling Was it worth it? When this question is posed, immediately we are confronted with a subject of ethics. In three studies by; Milgram, Zimbardo and Hofling, conformity and obedience are tested to extreme levels. Thus bringing ethics to the forefront of the psychological community and the world, concerning the treatment of subjects/participants. Milgrams study addressed obedience to authority. This began three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, his accomplices and his/their part in the genocidal holocaust. Eichmann had said that he was simply following orders. The experiment was set up to see how varying members of society would respond to a figure of authority when asked to deliver electric shocks to another person. Milgram's orthodox view was that few subjects would administer harsh shocks to another human. The test however showed Milgram that though the participants questioned whether they should continue, surprisingly it took little prompts to get them to continue. In this scenario 65% delivered the full, potentially fatal shock to the subject. These findings are of enormous importance both from an ethical and psychological viewpoint. This simple experiment showed and extreme willingness to follow the commands of an authority's figure, against their own morals, even when confronted
What is Ethics?
Ethics is a system of rules and principles of conduct. Responses to a questionnaire being publicly discussed or two people being watched without their knowledge or permission would be two examples of breached ethics. The British Psychological Society (BPS) has issued guidelines of conduct, along with their American counterparts the American Psychological Association (APA). Although regulations have been implemented for the first hand participant, neither of these two institutions provide for extended groups associated to the participants, for example friends or family. The principles outlined by these two bodies must be adhered to when conducting psychological research to avoid inflicting physical or psychological consequences on investigators or participants. All participants fall into some type of category, for instance they could be young, old, male, and female or from an ethnic group. All of whom need protection. One such study that aroused controversy and was heavily criticised on ethics was Phillip Zimbardo's prison experiment. Zimbardo aimed to establish "What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil or will evil triumph?" In 1973 Stanford University, California transformed their basement into a fully functional prison. For authenticity cells were created with CCTV, no windows or clocks were permitted. Zimbardo was to
Social Psychology - Milgram, Zimbardo prison study
Psychology- Milgram, Zimbardo prison study Sherif's Conformity and the autokinetic effect experiment Individuals were asked to estimate how far they thought The light moved, and then tested them together in a group. Group norm was established informational social influence Asch - Stimulus line- 74% of the innocent participants Went along with the group and conformed at least once Zimbardo's Prison simulation experiment- example of Normative influence, Volunteers were given authority and Asked to act as guards over other volunteers were prisoners. Aim: to see the psychological effects of making 'normal', 'Good' people into prisoners or guards.Volunteers: 24 mid Class, male college students, mentally fine and no criminal records, were paid $15 per day and divided into prisoners or guards by the flip of a coin.Procedure: Prisoners were arrested at their homes at the start of the study, blindfolded and taken to Stanford University basement, which had been converted into a realistic prison! From then on the volunteers were treated as prisoners by the other volunteers who were guards.End of the study: The Study was stopped after six days because the guards became sadistic and the prisoners became extremely stressed. Milgram's electric shock Obedience Aim: Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans
Were Milgram and Zimbardo unethical?
Ethical Issues Were Milgram and Zimbardo unethical? There is no doubt that both Milgram and Zimbardo caused great distress to volunteers in their studies of obedience and conformity to social roles. The two studies show us, very dramatically, the power of the situation on human behaviour. Milgram and Zimbardo chose ordinary people, of a sound psychological profile, not sadists and put them into challenging situations. In spite of their distress, or that of others, many volunteers continued in their violent behaviour. Volunteers were deceived and offered money to take part, In itself this is not unusual, deception of some sort is a feature of almost all psychological experiments, and small payments encourage people to take part. It may be argued that the volunteers were not reminded of their right to withdraw from the experiments at any time, in fact, they were encouraged to keep going, in order to see what happened. It is important to remember that neither Milgram nor Zimbardo expected their experiments to have such dramatic effects, although this does not absolve responsibility! To this end, Milgram consulted psychiatrists before carrying out his experiments - he debriefed and followed people up- even after a year - to make sure they weren't hurt by the experience. Most volunteers said they were pleased that they took part. Before his prison experiment, Zimbardo
Obedience to Authority: Milgram & Zimbardo
Obedience to Authority: Milgram & Zimbardo "Obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a vice" (Fromm 267). In "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem", the author Erich Fromm implies that "to be a human an individual must be free to obey and disobey" (272). Being obedient requires the removal of freedom, which comes from expressing your thoughts, feelings and emotions, without any boundaries or pressures from other individuals. An obedient individual is submissive towards another's' will and does not have very much freedom. Obedience occurs and can be analyzed when there is a setting of power and expectations to follow authority and a shift in viewpoint. The Stanford Prison Experiment can be interpreted in terms of Milgram's findings on submission to authority. In "The Perils of Obedience", Stanley Milgram conducts an experiment where individuals are forced to violate their conscience and to either obey or disobey the dissolute demands of an authority. The experiment tests the extent to which individuals will obey immoral commands when they are ordered to inflict pain on to learners. "The teacher is a genuinely naïve subject who has come to the laboratory for the experiment. The learner, or victim, is actually an actor who receives no shock at all" (Milgram 223). The experimenter orders the teacher to ask word pairs to the learner; for every word pair wrong, the
Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (prison simulation)
Psychology Essay - Sampling Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (prison simulation) i) The method of selecting the sample for the prison simulation study was very extensive - it began very simply, with a newspaper advert offering $15 a day to take part in a psychological study on 'prison life', and progressed from there. 75 potential subjects responded to the ad, and of these, 22 were finally selected to take part in the study. They were made to complete an extensive questionnaire, designed to find out about their family background, physical and mental health history, and their experiences with and attitude towards psychopathological tendencies (including any criminal history). Every respondent was also interviewed by one of the experimenters. The final selection were chosen because they appeared to the experimenters to be the most mature and mentally and physically stable, and the least likely to become involved in antisocial behaviour. Therefore, they were chosen on the basis of their 'normality', to demonstrate the effects that prison life could have on apparently ordinary, non-criminal people. The subjects were described as 22 'normal, healthy male college students', all of who happened to be in the Stanford area during the summer the study was carried out. They were mostly of middle-class socio-economic status, and Caucasian (with the exception of one Oriental man), and prior
"Some of the Procedures Used by Social Physiatrists Such as Asch, Zimbardo and Milgram are Ethically Questionable".
"Some of the Procedures Used by Social Physiatrists Such as Asch, Zimbardo and Milgram are Ethically Questionable" It is an undisputable fact that ethics will always be an important issue in any psychological experiment. However, some experiments can be perceived to have "crossed the line" much further than others. Is psychological scaring worth the results in the end or should psychological experiments be subject to serious scrutiny before even being attempted? While this debate could last forever, there are some experiments that undeniably over stepped some bounds to a point where no result could have been worth it. Such a scenario could be arguably seen in the experiment that Zimbardo carried out. Zimbardo's participants were randomly assigned the position of "guard" and "prisoner" then made to act out their given roles in a basement of a university. The "prisoners" were arrested in full view of the public, stripped, disinfected, assigned a number that they were to be referred to rather than their name and from then on were subjugated to the wrath of the "guards." The aim of Zimbardo's experiment was to see how well the participants would conform to their given roles over a period of two weeks. However, Zimbardo's experiment was cut short in half that amount of time when the "guards" became overly abusive and the "prisoners" got too distraught to reasonably continue the
Philip Zimbardo - A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment (1971)
Philip Zimbardo - A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment (1971) In 1971 Philip Zimbardo, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, conducted a remarkable experiment. The Subjects used were 21 healthy male undergraduate volunteers. Each person was to receive $15 a day for 2 weeks. Nine of the students were randomly selected to be "prisoners," while the rest were divided into three shifts of "guards," who worked around the clock. Some subjects were designated as "prisoners" with a flip of a coin and the rest served as "guards." Within a brief time, the "guards" and "prisoners" became totally absorbed in their respective roles. As the guards grew more aggressive, the prisoners became passive and apathetic. Prisoners are violent because of the type of people they are: antisocial criminals who have little regard for other people. Guards are brutal because only brutal people are attracted to such an occupation in the first place. They spent only a tenth of their conversation talking about subjects unrelated to imprisonment. The rest of the time they talked about escape, the quality of the food, and the causes of their discontent. Zimbardo wondered whether the structure of the prison situation played a part in turning prisoners and guards into mean and violent people. With the help of several colleagues, Zimbardo created a fake, simulated prison
Milgram, Hoffling and Zimbardo. Critically Consider the Psychological Factors Influencing Obedience to Authority Using Empirical Evidence to Support your Answe
Luke Schol Critically Consider the Psychological Factors Influencing Obedience to Authority Using Empirical Evidence to Support your Answer Milgram Aim: Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII. Procedure: Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional (GROSS, R. 1999). They were paid $4.50 for their participation in the experiment but importantly they were told that the payment was simply for coming to the laboratory, regardless of what happened after they arrived (Milgram. S 1963). At the beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles – leaner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate always ended to the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a white lab coat, played by an actor. The learner (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair in another room with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the
Social influence, its concepts and ethics
Social influence, its concepts and ethics. What is social influence? It shows up in many different formats, for example there is Audience effects where a person may alter their behaviour due to someone watching them, then there is Co-action effects where sometimes a person will alter their behaviour when they are with different people, for example if you're a mother and a teacher, you would act differently with the two different types of people that you would deal with. One of the first people to look at social influence was Norman Triplett (1898) he did a study in which he had children one a time wind up a fishing reel and timed them, he then brought in more children to the same room and did the same again and timed them once again, he found that children were faster when there was other children around than on their own, to ensure the data was correct he even had them repeat it on their own afterwards. There was debate over if this was just competiveness or the effects of having the other children around making them want to be better. There is also social facilitation, which is where a task would be made easier if there are more people around; this is shown during Triplett's study with the children and the fishing reels. Social loafing is the tendency for people to perform worse on simple tasks, yet better at complex tasks when they are in the presence of others. In other
