Essay Questions Concerning Deception in Stanley Milgram Research.

Essay Questions Concerning Deception in Stanley Milgram Research

Deception was a key feature in the procedure of Milgram’s study on obedience. A fundamental deception that was conducted was the fact that none of the participants were made aware that the study was about obedience. The participants were told that the study concerned learning and memory. Another deception that took place was the fact that all the participants were led to believe that the ‘learner’ was also a voluntary participant, and they believed they had a 50:50 chance between them of selecting the role of ‘teacher’ or ‘learner’. In fact the ‘learner’ was an actor and the situation was set up so that the real participant would always become ‘teacher’. One of the major deceptions in this study was that concerning the electric shocks. The participants believed they were administering increasingly higher electric shocks to the ‘learner’ in response to wrong or unanswered questions. However at no point during the study was an electric shock administered to the ‘learner’, all responses were on audio tape and the ‘learner’ was perfectly safe.

Deception in Milgram’s study gave cause for critism as it led to the breaking of other ethical guidelines. Firstly the participants were unable to give informed consent. This is a major ethical guideline, as experimenters should obtain informed consent from the participants, consenting to their participation in the experiment. Because the participants were misinformed and deceived about the nature of the true experiment they were not able to give this consent. Secondly participants are given protection from physical and mental harm during the experiment, under the ethical guidelines. However many of the participants were visibly shaken by their experiences due to the vastness the deception. Many of them showed signs of tension, from twitching and sweating to nervous laughing fits; however some participant also showed worrying signs of nervous collapse which for some resulted in full-blown uncontrollable seizures. One seizure was so violent that the experiment had to be put to a halt. These signs of distress were ultimately down to the fact that these participants believed they were giving harmful electric shocks to other members of the public, which of course they were not; this was the other form of deception.

If the participants had not been deceived to the nature of the experiment they would have been able to make an informed decision as to whether they wanted to participate in the experiment and therefore expose themselves to the possibility of mental harm. Also if the participants had not been deceived about the falseness of the electric shocks they would not have suffered mental and physical harm. Therefore if there had not been deception in Milgram’s experiment other crucial ethical guidelines would not have been breached.

Milgram reputed such allegations. He believed that without such deceptions the experiment ...

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Milgram reputed such allegations. He believed that without such deceptions the experiment would not have been successful. In his words “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at truths”. Therefore if the participants were aware of the true nature of the experiment and the falseness of the electric shocks these said ‘truths’ would not have been able to be revealed. In direct response to the allegation of the breech of participant protection which was due to the amount of deception used, Milgram said “the central moral justification for allowing a procedure of the sort used in my experiment is that it is judged acceptable by those who have taken part in it”, and 83% of participants believed that this deception was justified. Also Milgram said that he hadn’t anticipated these results and reactions and there was no long term harm caused. This was verified by a set of interviews conducted with the participants a year after the experiment. Most participants felt that their involvement had been rewarding and informative. However this could be a sign of a lasting effect on the participants. Can people live with the knowledge that they could inflict that amount of pain on a fellow human being? If the participants felt it had been rewarding, in what way, (as in everyday life this would not happen) had the experiment helped them except by leaving them insecure in their own personality.

If there had not been so much deception used in Milgram’s experiment participants would have been protected and would not have suffered any mental adverseness after the experiment had taken place. The resulting effects of the experiment was solely due to the use of deception

It would be very hard to conduct a similar study without some form of deception, as an alternative may result in demand characteristic or the experimenter effect. For example, the presence of an experimenter may lead to certain behaviours, other from natural, of the participant. The participant may pick up clues as to how the experimenter expects, or wants them to behave and subsequently behave in that manor, therefore leading to inaccurate, and unreliable results.. You could have conducted this experiment as a field experiment, using observation as a measure. You could hire actors to go out onto the streets and see to what level people would comply to a certain request. However with this method there would be a number of factors that would need to be taken into consideration as they may affect the results. You would have no control over variables from simple things such as temperature to more complex things such as the situation. We would have no measure as to how the observer or the actor affected the level of obedience shown. For instance, if the actor was dressed as a policeman we would expect a higher level of obedience, in relation to an actor posing as a civilian. This would be due to the attitudes towards social standing and the cultural attitudes to people in certain roles. It is also non-experimental as it does not allow us to generalise and to find a fundamental relationship.

Anjali Lockett