The Importance Of Ethical Guidelines

People often do or take parts in acts that are not only morally wrong but also extremely painful to the victim. When someone is order by a higher authority figure they do what was ordered forgetting about their morals and the consequences that it may have. It is important to understand that just because the order was given by a person with a high status or rank it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. In 1963 Stanly Milgram a psychologist at Yale University carried out an experiment where he tested the obedience of people. He wanted to know if people followed order depending on how superior there title was. One of the main goals was to figure out how far someone would go following orders even if it involved hurting someone. The experiment …show more content…
It is important to understand these guidelines because we carry them and use them in our everyday life. In most cases people learned this type of behavior in their homes, school, and church while in other cases they develop it from different situations in their life. When doing an experiment or research it is important to have and follow ethnical guidelines, some for instance are, honoring the participants with the truth, informing the participants if the research done can harm them in any way, clarifying the participant’s role, rights and obligations before hand, respecting their right of confidentially, keeping the promises made to the participants, respecting and treating your colleagues fairly, avoiding discrimination with participants or colleagues, treat and care when using animals in the research and minimize the harm and risk of the participants. Some ethnical issues in Milgram’s experiment were for started that he lied to the participants by not telling them that the “learner” was one of his associates and “experimenter” was an actor. Another one was the fact that for this experiment to be done it involved exposing the participants who were taking the role as the “learner” to an extremely painful situation by electrocuting them, not worrying about the fiscal and psychological harm that can have. In addition, if the participant with the role of the “teacher” wanted to stop the “experimenter” would urge and obligate him to continue telling him he had no choice. Some changes I would make in this experiment would be to not have any associates playing a role and have an actual experimenter conduct the experiment. Secondly, I would tell the participant beforehand what they would be doing and the danger and consequences it could have and how it