In another variation the experimenter commanded over a telephone rather than from a desk next to the teacher, and this resulted in the number of participants who administered the highest level of shock decreased drastically by 44 percent. The victim’s proximity had an effect as well. In one variation, the learner was moved right next to the teacher, and when the learner refused to receive the shocks, the teacher had to physically hold out the learner’s arm to a shock plate. Here it was observed that administration to the highest level of shock decreased by 35 percent. However, it is imperative to acknowledge the high levels of obedience participants displayed under conditions, in which the experimenter’s authority was not apparent.
There is much discussion on whether Milgram’s experiment is actually unethical. In 1961 at Yale University, Stanley Milgram selected a group of participants for his experiment through a newspaper ad searching for male participants. To carry out the procedure, the participant was paired with another person; one of them played the teacher and the other was the learner. However, the experiment was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was someone who worked for Milgram, pretending to be a participant. The way the actual experiment worked was by hooking up the learner to electrodes, which would cause a shock administered by the teacher in the next room.
A Driving Cause A prominent explanation was suggested and studies by Haslam et al. (2014) who came up with the "Followership Model" that was mentioned earlier, focused on the type of prod used, and the correlation between the type of prod used and the levels of obedience exhibited. They designed a study in which they assessed each prod of the 4 used by Milgram and found out that the prod that yielded in the highest obedience scores was a prod that implied obedience in the name of scientific advancement and benefit. Counter intuitively, the prod that signified a clear order had the lowest obedience rates. This idea pours into the mechanisms used to control masses and elicit obedience among large amounts of people.
However, in every trial, it was fixed that Wallace was the learner and all the other participants were the teachers. Wallace stayed in a different room and did not receive the actual shocks; he just pretends to act and made painful sounds. In this experiment, Wallace would have to answer the questions by the teacher, if he gets it wrong, the teacher would give him an electric shock which starts from 15Volts and increases each time until it reaches 400Volts. The teachers already knew beforehand that the last two dangerous zones, which are 375V and 450V, could kill the participant. Furthermore, in the same room as the teacher was an experimenter who sat just behind to notice the situation and take notes.
Some of the “learners” being shocked are literally begging for the shocking to stop, some even faked death yet almost all of the subjects continued the shocking. Harman points out that thinking that this experiment actually proves peoples’ obedience to authority is committing the fundamental attribution error of overlooking the condition the subjects were placed
According to Feldman (2013), obedience is the change in conduct as ordered by others. A standout amongst the most celebrated obedience study was done by Stanley Milgram in 1963. He was a psychologist at Yale University. He carried out an experiment concentrating on the altercation personal conscience and obedience towards authority (Milgram, 1963) The experiment was conducted with the assistance of 40 volunteers who were between 20-50 years of age. They were rounded up by an advertisment on the newspaper promoting male volunteers to take part in a study at Yale University.
Of the multiple laws changed, many were due to the research done in the Stanford Prison Experiment and the way that prisoners and guards conform to these roles in real life. In fact, Zimbardo testified at multiple trials defending both guards and prisoners, among other groups, to bring up the power of the situation theory and other research that he studied in the Stanford Prison Experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment is such an important lesson for all us to learn from that there has recently been a film adaptation of the experiment. Even law enforcement in many states is required to watch a documentary on the Stanford Prison Experiments in order to show themselves what not to do. Thankfully, America’s prison systems have caught wise and have also been enforcing their rules differently, such as how they treat their prisoners and what force police officers should and should not be able to inflict.
One ethical issue was deception; Milgram made his subjects believe that they were really shocking the ‘learner,’ when the ‘learner’ was actually a confederate of the experimenter. Milgram conducted an interview afterwards to evaluate the effect of deception, 83.7% of participants said that they were “glad to be in the experiment” (McLeod, "The Milgram Experiment”). Their eagerness to participate in an experiment in which they were asked to harm another individual indicates that these participants may have obeyed orders regardless of if there was an authority figure within the room or not. Furthermore, the experiment was designed to put the participants in a great amount of stress (McLeod, "The Milgram Experiment”). Researchers have found that stress can alter one’s decision-making process, causing them to focus on the positives (money the participants gain) rather than the negatives of the experiment (the harm that may be caused to the ‘learner’) ("Stress Changes How”).
Deception can only be used in research if there is no harm caused to the participants. Although deception was required to make the study successful, it was unethical as it tricked participants to believe they had caused suffering towards another human, resulting in psychological stress. Participants of Milgram’s study were deceived as they were convinced the experiment was about “the effects of punishment on learning” and were made to believe they were giving real electric shocks to the learner. They were unaware that there was no 'learner ' and they were listening to recordings of a person screaming in pain. At one point, the screams stopped which made the participants believe the learner was unconscious.
The film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, is an excellent modern-day example of social constructionism. The film expertly portrays the sheer intensity of the psychological effects that a prison would have on the minds of people. As well as how, over an extended time period, the volunteers would begin to act out in undesirable behavior. From the way that they acted out, to the ways that some of them retreated into themselves. This topic is informed by psychology This topic informs psychology by the way that Socials A