Social Psychological Experiments Essay -- Social Issues, Authority

Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist, conducted an experiment in 1963 about human obedience that was deemed as one of the most controversial social psychology experiments ever (Blass). Ian Parker, a writer for the New Yorker and Human Sciences, and Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, responded to Stanley Milgram’s experiment. These articles represent how the scientific community reviews and scrutinizes each other’s work to authenticate experiment results. Baumrind focuses on the moral and ethical dilemma while, Parker focuses more on the experiment’s actual application. The experiment’s original intent was to determine if society would simply obey to authority when put under pressure by an authoritative figure. Milgram put a twist on the experiment asking the age-old question of, â€Å"if the Germans during WWII were simply obeying to authority when carrying out the Holocaust or were they all acting on their own†(Blass). The test subject, or teacher, would administer electric shocks to the learner, a paid actor, when the learner incorrectly answered the word pairings. The teacher thought the learner was receiving electric shocks when in reality the learner was not receiving any shocks. An instructor, the authoritative figure, was sitting behind the teacher reassuring the teacher that the shocks may be painful but would not inflict permanent damage. Throughout the experiment, the teacher can be seen looking back towards the instructor for permission on whether to continue or stop (ABC).The teacher instructed the learner to continue even when the learner cried out in pain and begged for the experiment to stop (ABC). Sixty-five percent of the time, the teacher continued until he administered the ... ... Baumrind’s idea that if Milgram were to fully disclose the experiment would it still produces the same results as the original experiment? Milgram does arrange for a friendly meeting between the teacher and the learner after the experiment. The meeting was supposed to relieve all tensions that are burdened upon the teacher throughout the experiment. Baumrind does not believe that this simple meeting between the teacher and learner was enough to relieve all tensions of the experiment (227). She simply suggests that Milgram should have offered a psychiatric evaluation or therapy to the patients after participating in the experiment (227). The ethical treatment that Milgram showed towards his patients denied him his APA membership. â€Å"The ethical furor preyed on Milgram’s mind – in the opinion of Arthur G. Miller, it may have contributed to his premature death†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (234).