Evaluation of Milgram's Obedience Study

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Evaluation of Milgram’s Obedience Study

Stanley Milgram was from a Jewish background and conducted the experiment to see how people can obey to an apparent authority figure e.g. Germans in World War II. He advertised for participants in a newspaper offering payment of $4.50. Volunteers were told that the experiment was looking at the effects of punishment on learning. The participant played the role of the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ was a stooge, Mr Wallace. The teacher would ask the learner questions, when answered incorrectly they administered electric shocks of increasing voltage up to 450V. When the teacher began to worry the experimenter would use several prompts to encourage their continuation. 65% of the participants continued up to 450V, no one stopped before 300V. The results were much higher than anyone had expected. However Milgram’s work has been highly criticised on ethical and methodological grounds and is highly controversial due to the stress caused to the participants.

Milgram’s main critic on Ethical grounds is Diane Baumrind. She criticised Milgram on 5 ethical issues; informed consent, deception, the right to withdraw, protection of the participant and debriefing.

The British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines state that participants should be given all the information they need to make an informed decision on whether or not to take part in the experiment. Baumrind believed that due to the nature of the experiment there was no opportunity for the participants to be fully informed about the experiment. Therefore they could not give their informed consent. Milgram responded to this argument by saying that he had received prior general consent from other possible participants and presumptive consent from other psychologists and psychiatrists.

The BPS guidelines also say that deception in experiments should be avoided wherever possible and should only be used where scientifically justified and the study would be meaningless otherwise. They also say that deception should not occur if the participant will be unhappy with the true nature of the experiment. Baumrind argues that there was an unnecessarily large amount of deception involved in the study. She believed that the experiment had poor cost and benefit analysis meaning that the deception outweighed the rewards. Milgram disagreed saying that deception is needed for the experiment to work. He debriefed all the participants afterwards and he could not predict their reaction.  

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During and after an experiment the participant must have the right to withdraw. They should be able to leave the experiment at anytime and they can request to have their data removed from the experiment. Baumrind says that the participants could not exercise their right to withdraw due to the pressure the experimenter applied. Milgram used four ‘prompts’ to get the teacher to continue, ‘Please continue’, ‘The experiment requires that you continue’, ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue’ and ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’. Baumrind argues that this makes the participant think they do ...

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