A Shocking Experiment

A SHOCKING

1963 EXPERIMENT

Imagine you’re standing outside a shop window in 1963, you see a newspaper article looking for participants for a memory study, do you sign up for the research?

This, of course is how Stanley Milgram recruited participants for arguably one of the most controversial psychological studies of all time. Participants, like you and me, read his newspaper article and signed up for Milgram’s experiment. The psychologist then chose only 40 male participants from the field of applicants. Little did they know the mental and physical peril that many of them would be subjected to.

You may be reading this pondering as to how a memory study could be so controversial? You would be right to question this, as this wasn’t a memory study at all, it was actually a study on obedience. Milgram deceived his participants as to what the aim of the study was, breaking one of the many stipulations in the Code of Ethics as set out by the British Psychology Society. The Code of Ethics initially was set up in 1954 by the British Psychology Society, but has been updated numerous times since, with the latest amendments being in 2018. Therefore, with an even stricter Code of Ethics in Psychology and other sciences nowadays, it would be extremely unlikely that you would even be able to participate in a study like Milgram’s. Despite Milgram’s experiment being highly unethical, one can’t deny that Milgram’s research into obedience has had a significant influence on how Psychologists in the 21st Century explain obedience. Without Milgram’s research, society wouldn’t have access to this information on obedience and wouldn’t be able to try and explain real life situations; such as the theories into why people obeyed Hitler, leading to one of the most inhumane actions in history: the Holocaust. It makes one ponder as if Milgram was subject to the strict Code of Ethics made by Psychologists now, there is a significant chance that his obedience studies would have never been carried out.

Milgram’s original obedience study:

Milgram’s study consisted of two confederates: an experimenter, played by an actor, and another man who played the role of the learner (an actor called Mr Wallace). Mr Wallace and the real participant, the member of the public, drew cards to see who would act as the ‘teacher’ and who the ‘learner’. This was rigged so that the real participant was always the teacher and the ‘fake’ participant, Mr Wallace, was always the learner. The teacher was required to test the learner on his ability to remember word pairs. Every time he got one wrong, the teacher had to administer increasingly strong electric shocks, starting at 15 volts, and then continuing up to the maximum of 450 volts. The learner sat in another room and the majority of time gave the wrong answer purposefully, in order to receive the fake electric shocks. Once the fake shocks reached 300V the learner pretended to be in severe pain by pounding on the wall and giving no further response to any other questions.

When the teacher turned to the experimenter for guidance, he gave a sequence of ‘prods’ consisting of “please continue” or “please go on”. No participant stopped below 300 volts. Five (12.5%) stopped at 300 volts, 65% continued to 450 volts. Prior to the study Milgram asked 14 psychology students to predict the naïve participants behaviour. They estimated no more than 3% of them would continue to 450 volts. So it was more than just Milgram’s lack of ethics that was shocking.

After Milgram’s experiment, many would argue that, yes, ethical boundaries should limit psychological research in the 21st Century, because otherwise this gives psychologists and researchers too much power, especially as people don’t question their authority due to the perceived legitimacy of it (as found out by Milgram’s research). Indeed, one could argue that Milgram abused his authority as a psychologist. Furthermore, Milgram’s research ended with psychologically harmful side effects, with some participants displaying signs of extreme tension, sweating, trembling, biting their lip - 3 of the participants even had full-blown seizures. This breaks the ‘protection from harm’ principle set out in the Code of Ethics, and stricter implementation of this in the modern era has helped protect others from being subjected to harm by anyone who would wish to repeat the experiment.

Further to this, Baumrind (1964) argued that highly unethical research like Milgram’s damages the reputation of psychologists’ research and additionally makes people less likely to volunteer for future psychological experiments. Milgram broke additional Code of Ethics stipulations, including ‘deceit’, as he lied to his participants about the aim of his experiment and he lied to the participants about their roles being ‘randomly allocated’ (the participant was always the ‘teacher’), and he lied to the participants about the electric shocks being real. This deception therefore means that Milgram couldn’t have received full informed consent for his research, breaking yet another aspect of the Code of Ethics (consent) and leading to a lack of respect for his participants. Arguably, ethical boundaries should limit psychological research because the Code of Ethics enables full respect to the participants involved in any form of research.

However, one may rebut this argument and argue that after Milgram’s experiment, ethical boundaries shouldn’t limit psychological research because future research and future discoveries may become prohibited or limited due to stringent ethical boundaries, disadvantaging the whole of society in terms of its scientific progression. Further to this, the benefits outweigh the risks, as from Milgram’s experiment we are able to suggest that obedience is due to situational factors including: proximity, location and uniform. Furthermore, in Milgram’s study, 84% reported they felt glad to have participated and 74% felt they had learned something of personal importance, therefore benefitting the participants too. Milgram interviewed his participants a year later and found that no participant showed any sign of long-term psychological harm, meaning that the ethical issue of ‘protection from harm’ was not broken in the long term.

Arguably, other ethical issues can be overcome, as although Milgram deceived his participants, he debriefed everyone straight after the experiment had ended, reassuring everyone that their behaviour was normal and telling them the true aim of his study. In other research, the ethical issue of causing a participant psychological harm, can be overcome by offering therapy or counselling to those experiencing it. Despite Milgram’s “prods” making it harder for participants to withdraw, he never refused any one their right to withdraw, in which 35% of participants did choose to withdraw, he simply made it slightly harder - after all his aim of his study was determining why somebody obeyed. This illustrates that sometimes deceit is needed, as otherwise this decreases the validity and usefulness of the experiment, as participants wouldn’t display their real life behaviour if they knew the aim of the study (demand characteristics).

There is no easy answer to this ethical dilemma, however the British Psychological Society suggests that at all costs the researcher should maximise the benefit and minimise the harm. The British Psychological Society suggests, “Researchers will need to consider the costs to the individual participant versus potential societal benefits. This is a difficult balance to strike and should be arrived at by careful and explicit analysis and where appropriate, wider consultation with experienced colleagues”.