Milgram Experiments

In Milgram's (1963, 1974) obedience experiments, research participants, in the role of “teacher,” were instructed to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to another participant, the “learner,” for errors in a learning task. An unexpectedly high percentage of participants followed the experimenter's instructions to administer the maximum (apparently extremely painful) shock level. In fact, no shocks were administered, and all parties to the experiment, with the exception of the “teacher,” were members of Milgram's research team. Despite their being, in many respects, so unlike any other research, these studies have been, for almost 40 years, the key reference point in discussions of ethical issues in social science research. Why have they been so prominent in the specific context of ethical issues?

1.
The Milgram experiments have become the bestknown and, for some, the most important research in psychology. Observing high rates of destructive obedience on the part of normal persons, they have been interpreted as revealing a major cause of the Nazi Holocaust (Miller, 1995). The unusual circumstance of a research program being both extraordinarily famous but also extremely controversial ethically has contributed to the unprecedented impact of these studies and created a highly instructive benchmark for discussing research ethics in general.
2.
Milgram's first published account (1963) presented highly graphic portraits of stress and tension experienced by the research participants: “I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse” (Milgram, 1963, p. 377). It was in the context of these reports that the Milgram experiments came to be viewed as exposing participants to possibly dangerous levels of psychological risk.
3.
A landmark citation was an early ethical critique of the Milgram experiments by Diana Baumrind (1964), published in the American Psychologist. Baumrind accused Milgram of (a) violating the experimenter's obligation to protect the emotional welfare of participants, (b) conducting an inadequate postexperimental debriefing, and (c) using a flawed methodology that produced highly questionable [Page 645]results, thus arguing that the benefits of Milgram's research were not worth the ethical costs. She concluded that Milgram's participants would experience a loss of trust in authority figures and a permanent loss of self-esteem. Although Baumrind's criticisms were subsequently rebutted by Milgram and many others (Miller, 1986), her commentary had a powerful impact and became a model for ethical criticism.
4.
A key feature of the Milgram experiments was the coercion built into the method. Participants who expressed a desire to withdraw from the study, were continuously prodded by the experimenter to continue in their role of shocking the other participant. By current ethical standards of the American Psychological Association (APA), this coercive aspect could make the obedience research unethical:

APA Ethics Codes Revision Draft 6,

October 21, 2001

8.02 INFORMED CONSENT to Research

When obtaining informed consent as required in Standard 3.10, Informed Consent, psychologists inform participants about (1) the purpose of the research, expected duration, and procedures; (2) their right to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research once participation has begun.

Although the use of DECEPTION and a lack of a truthful informed consent were also important features of the Milgram experiments, these factors, in themselves, are not a crucial feature of the legacy of the Milgram experiments. A significant proportion of contemporary psychological research (including the Ethical Guidelines of the APA) endorses a judicious use of deception (Epley & Huff, 1998).

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