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He also notes that the distress as well as the level of compliance was unexpected, and some unpredictability of any experiment must be expected by both researchers and volunteers (Milgram 1964).
This type of 'follow up,' while perhaps acceptable in the 1960s would likely be seen as inadequate by modern researchers. But recently, in an essay in Granta Magazine, Ian Parker has reevaluated the obedience experiments, noting that they cast doubt upon our sense of self. So much of morality is situational, he notes, perhaps the most profound revelation of the Milgram experiments. The experiments are thus a counterweight against the idea that people who commit genocide during a tyrannical regime are different than us -- rather they are 'us,' or could be us, if we do not resist the will to obey without thought.
Milgram's experiments did likely have a positive social influence and show the banality of evil -- a banality that is still being exposed across the world today. However, a reader cannot help but wish that the lesson did not need to be learned within a laboratory, and the lessons of the real world would...
Milgram's experiments raise provoking questions, regardless of their ethical problems -- they would likely never be performed again, in any form at a university. But they did not answer how to motivate people to act morally against authority, which would be a more difficult experiment to design.
Works Cited
Baumrind, Diana. (1964). "Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram's 'Behavioral Study of Obedience.'" American Psychologist, 1964.
19: 421-423. Retrieved 24 Apr 2008 at http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/baumrind_crit_mil.html
Milgram, Stanley. (1964)."Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind."
American Psychologist. 19:848-852. Retrieved 24 Apr 2008 at http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/milgram_rebut2.html
Milgram, Stanley. (1963). "The Perils of Obedience."
Parker, Ian. (2000, Autumn). "Obedience." Granta. 71.
Works Cited
Baumrind, Diana. (1964). "Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram's 'Behavioral Study of Obedience.'" American Psychologist, 1964.
19: 421-423. Retrieved 24 Apr 2008 at http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/baumrind_crit_mil.html
Milgram, Stanley. (1964)."Issues in the Study of Obedience: A Reply to Baumrind."
American Psychologist. 19:848-852. Retrieved 24 Apr 2008 at http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/milgram_rebut2.html
Stanley Milgram on Obedience Legitimacy and Proximity: Social Influences that Determines and Generates Obedience in Stanley Milgram's Obedience Study (Behavioral Study of Obedience, 1963) For many years, psychology, as one of the main branches of social science, has tried to discern and understand human behavior and its relation to the society through empirical observation and experimentation. Social scientists, under the philosophy, methods, and principles of psychology, tried to understand human mind, particularly
Milgram Obedience, Morality and the Scientific Process in Milgram During the period between 1963 and 1974, social psychologist, professor and theorist Stanley Milgram published a landmark series of findings regarding the nature of morality, authority and obedience. Compelled by the recently revealed atrocities of the Holocaust, Milgram was driven to better understand the kinds of institutional forces that could make ostensibly ordinary men and women commit acts of such heinous proportions as
Obedience: The dilemma of a democratic society One of the most famous studies ever conducted on the subject of human obedience was that of Stanley Milgram's electric shock experiments. In Milgram's experiments, subjects were pressed to transmit what they believed were deadly electric shocks to fellow human beings. The purpose of Milgram's experiments was in part to understand how Nazi soldiers could have possibly have committed such horrific atrocities during World
In fairness, Milgram did not anticipate that the research subjects would experience as much stress as they did during the experiment. Second, the experiment raises a serious ethical issue in that it held the potential for causing long-term harmful changes to the psychological well-being of the research subjects. On one hand, Milgram did carefully and conscientiously debrief his subjects in connection with which he also reassured them that their behavior
classic Milgram studies on obedience were inspired by the Nurnberg trials of Nazi war criminals who consistently argued in their defense to their charges that they were just carrying out orders. In his original study Stanley Milgram (1963) had wanted to see if people would inflict pain to the point of serious injury or death as the result of being ordered to do so by authority figures. Milgram used
Meanwhile on the subject of obedience, an article in American Psychologist (written by the former research assistant to Milgram at Yale University) poses the following question: if Milgram's experiments / research were conducted today, in 2009, "would people still obey… " (Elms, 2009, p. 34). The answer given in most cases by Elms is that "…a current measure of obedience to destructive authority would find substantially less obedience than