How To Evaluate The Milgram Experiment

In 1962, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to test the authority of the average American citizen. Milgram gathered a group of forty men to test their obedience to an authoritative figure. Each subject was brought into the experiment under the impression that they were going to be evaluated on how well they were able to learn a series of word combinations. The way they were encouraged to remember these combinations was by using a form of negative extrinsic motivation. Each time a wrong answer was given, the learner would administer a shock of increasing value to the learner. The shocks started at a voltage of fifteen volts and increased by fifteen volts until they were administering a shock measuring 450 volts. What the test subjects …show more content…
The experiment conductor urged the “teacher” to continue after every hesitation and the resistance to the action was measured. The experiment was done four separate times. Each time the experiment was reperformed, the distance between the teacher and learner was changed. The findings were that people do what they are told to do if an authority figure has given them a command. However, the results started to trend down as the teacher and learner got closer to one another. The poorest results occurred when the teacher had to physically touch the learner in order to punish him. The most cooperative test subjects were the subjects who could not see or hear the learning person. The Milgram experiment pushed the ethical limits to the brink in 1962. Ethical evaluations between authority figures and subjects began in the Greek era. Milgram covered himself by informing the test subject that would receive the shock what would happen. Yet, the information he provided was inaccurate and therefore not legally acceptable any longer. Milgram began the experiment by completely misinforming his subjects of what the true intention of the experiment was. This begins to breach the moral