Sociology 111: Ethical Reflections on Milgram Experiment

Ethical Reflections on Milgram Experiment
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Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment to test the willingness of people to obey orders and submit themselves to authority. He was trying to understand why a lot of German citizens in Nazi times tacitly consented to the persecution of Jews and other minorities. The test required the participants to give electric shocks to learners if they commit a mistake under the instruction of a ‘scientist’. There was an option to punish the learner with higher voltage shocks for recurring mistakes. The shocking result of the study was that more than half of the volunteers were ready to obey the command of the ‘scientist’ and torture the learner to the tipping point, even though they were hearing their cries (pre-recorded, not real). Chambliss and Eglitis (2015) point out that Milgram experiment concluded that even good people tend to conform to authority even when they have to hurt others, provided that the responsibility lies with the authority. It can be argued that people not only too ready to harm others but also themselves if they are to comply with authority.
I think that such an experiment today would yield the same results as human nature has not changed much. I do not think that no society will have more than a couple of people who would actively rebel against authority when faced with injustice.
This study was widely contested for ethical concerns, many of which answered by Stanley Milgram in the Apendix 1: Problems of Ehtics in Research of his book ‘Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View’. Accordign to Milgram (1974), 84% of the participants, ...