Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
Stanley Milgram’s classic obedience study highlights the profound difficulty of weighing research risks against benefits, as the severe psychological stress was borne by the participants, while the resulting scientific knowledge primarily benefited society. Participants experienced extreme tension, including trembling and seizures, because they were deceptively led to believe they were administering painful electric shocks to a confederate. The ongoing debate surrounding this study centers on whether the significant insights gained into destructive obedience—which help explain historical atrocities like the Holocaust—were truly worth the severe emotional harm inflicted on the participants. Notably, evaluating this ethical balance requires acknowledging that Milgram went to great lengths to debrief his participants, returning their mental states to normal and demonstrating that most found the research valuable and were glad to have participated.
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What was the primary finding of Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience?
What historical context motivated Stanley Milgram to conduct his experiment on obedience?
What ethical concerns were raised by Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience?
What was the main purpose of Stanley Milgram's experiment on obedience?
Milgram Experiment Recruitment Advertisement
Influence of the Eichmann Trial on Milgram's Research
Methodology of the Milgram Experiment
The Problem of Destructive Obedience
Milgram Experiment Results by Shock Level
Variations of the Milgram Experiment
Contemporary Relevance of the Milgram Experiment
Research Confederate
Inspiration for Milgram's Obedience Study
Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
Why is the Milgram experiment considered a prominent example of active deception in psychological research?
Debriefing
Unjustifiable Research Harm
APA Ethics Code
Humane Care and Use of Animals in Research
Beneficiaries of Psychological Research
Unethical Research Motivations
Risks and Benefits to Research Participants
Risks and Benefits to Science and Society
Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
Why can the ethical evaluation of weighing a study's risks against its benefits be particularly challenging for psychological researchers?
A psychological study can be considered ethically acceptable even when the research participants themselves bear most of the risks, as long as the potential benefits to the broader scientific community or society are judged to sufficiently outweigh those risks.
Middlemist's Personal Space Study
Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
Ethical conflict in psychological research is considered largely unavoidable because very few studies are completely risk-free.
Ethical Implications of the Milgram Experiment
Which of the following best describes the role of a confederate in a psychological experiment?