Stanley’s Milgram’s Obedience Studies

Jocelyne Aleman

Professor Comstock

English 80

01 May 2017

Milligram’s obedience studies

Stanley’s Milgram’s obedience studies may have caused temporal phycological damage to the participants, but the studies have enriched human’s knowledge regarding human nature.

        One reason that Milligram’s obedience study was ethical was because it actually benefited the applicants in the sense to critically think about the commands given to them by authority figures. A person who is able to create their own thoughts about certain actions is a self sustainable person. Stanley Milgram considers “it to be a highest value if participation in the experiment could, indeed, incuicate a skepticism of this kind of authority.” In other words, upon the completion of the experiment the applicants were taught the valuable lesson that one shouldn’t blindly take orders from authoritive figures merely because of their title and status. Ultimately, this study was able to benefit the applicants and therefore it was ethical.

        Another concept that should be realized is that the participants learned self-responsibility after they felt guilty. Baumrind, for example, stated that after the experiment he couldn’t “justify his behavior and must bear the full brunt of his actions”(Milgram 849). In other words, Baumrid quickly realized he should have self-responsibility upon feeling guilty for shocking the “patient” in the experiment. Though the participants felt guilty, guilt shouldn’t be considered as a form of immoral torture towards the applicants. The outcome of this experiment was the lesson taught to the patients about becoming self-responsible. The outcome wasn’t unethical therefore the whole experiment shouldn’t be considered unethical as well.

Even though the participants were deceived, it was an important part of the experiment in order to understand the thought process of the participants. Milgram started with the belief that “every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority” (Milgram 851). They had the option to leave the experiment, therefore they had the option to accept or reject the commands given by the scientist. The participants had the ability to self-reflect on their orders and wouldn’t have any consequences for disobeying. It wasn’t unethical to deceive them since it was testing the participants thought process of cruel orders given by authoritive figures.