Ethical Issues
The Milgram Experiment raised many ethical questions because of the extreme emotional stress and unpleasant insight suffered by the participants. The participants were unaware of what was going to happen. The study lacked "informed consent", which means they were not given accurate descriptions of the risks involved before agreeing to participate in the experiment. The participants were exposed to highly stressful situations that could have caused psychological harm. The experiment was full of deception. Participants were told this was a study on learning and memory. Miligram felt that if he had revealed the actual reason for the study, which was obedience, the subjects would not perform naturally and this might alter the experiment.
The participants, who were labeled as the "teachers", actually believed they were shocking a real person ("the learner"). In reality the "learner" was an actor hired by Milgram. Milgram argued that "illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths".
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Milgram ExperimentThe "teachers" were shaken by the fact they could allow themselves to inflict such pain on another person through the lethal levels of electrical shocks. This realization could have had long term negative effects on the participants.
Many of the participants were visibly distressed. These symptoms included: trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three of the participants had uncontrollable seizures; one so violent that the experiment was stopped. Many of the participants begged to be allowed to stop the experiment. Milgram argued that these effects were only short term. Once the participants were debriefed and could see the learner was fine, their stress levels decreased. The participants were fully debriefed after the experiment, and had a follow up with Miligram at one year to ensure that there was no...