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Why Is The Stanley Milgram Experiment Unethical

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Name: FerhinAkther Madonna Id: 250502 Subject: Medical Ethics-Assignment 1 Stanley Milgram Experiment At Yale University, Stanley Milgram a psychologist carried out the most famous study of obedience in psychology. The experiment was focused on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal ethics. In 1963, Milgram was interested in researching how far a person would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Milgram was interested to see how an individual could be influenced by committing murders, for instance the Germans in World War II. Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were obedient to their superiors as that was the common explanation for assassinations in the Nazi in World War II. At Yale University, Milgram selected participants by placing an announcement that was printed in the newspaper highlighting the male participants to take part in the study of learning. Participants were 40 males who were aged between 20 to 50 and their jobs ranged from unskilled to professionals. There were two types of participants; one was called learner and the other was called teacher. But the participants (Teachers) …show more content…

The experimenter betrayed the participants who were made to believe that they were imposing pain on the learners and were put on stress. Some teachers even believed that they have hurt or killed the learner causing a lot of stress. Milgram also lied about the experiments, informing his participants that the purpose of the experiment was to study about the effects of punishment on learning; however the real purpose of the experiment was to measure the obedience. Even though the participants were not informed after the experiment was over, opponents believed that it was not enough because it did not stop the psychological damage that have affected the

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