This experiment led the American Psychological Association to carefully review its human subject procedures. Milgram's application for membership in APA was held up for a year while possible violation of ethical princples in this experiment were investigated. Milgram had been criticized for subjecting the subjects with undue harm. In addition, subjects were not informed about what was going to happen to them. Milgram was cleared of any ethical violations, but the controversy still rages today. Here is a summary of the issues:


Psychological Harm

Distress during the experiment

People were placed in a very tense situation in which many felt a great deal of stress. The research was criticized because is not ethical to design a study which intends to create this kind of stress [1].

Milgram's Defense

Milgram maintained [2] that this was not a study designed to create stress. The obvious tension that many experienced was initially unexpected. Milgram had believed that many of the subjects would disobey the experimenter at 150 volts (when the victim protested).

When it became apparent to Milgram and his colleagues that there were high levels of stress experienced by some of the subjects during the experiment, he investigated for any potential harm. Milgram states "As the experiment progressed there was no indication of injurious effects in the subjects; and as the subjects themselves strongly endorsed the experiment, the judgment I made was to continue the experiment. [2,p.140]

For a contrasting decision on similar research, see Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment in which Zimbardo determined that there was harm and terminated his experiment of a simulated prison [with subjects playing the roles of prisoners or guards]).

A "dehoaxing" debriefing and reconcilation was a part of the research procedure. Each "teacher" had a friendly reconciliation with the obviously unharmed victim. Their behavior in the experiment was explained by the experimenter in the best possible light. For example, if the subject had obeyed the experimenter completely, their behavior in the experiment was describerd as normal and that their feelings of conflict and stress were felt by other participants.

Long Term Psychological Harm

The realization that they could administer such lethal levels of shock to another human being could have long term negative psychological effects on the subjects. What might people think about themselves knowing that they were willing to administer possibly lethal shocks to a helpless learner.

Milgram's Defense

In addition to the post-experiment debriefing, Milgram sent each of the "teachers" a written report in which their performance in the experiment was treated in a dignified way.

Subjects also received a questionnaire about their participation in the experiment and gave the following assessment of their participation:

83.7%	I am glad/very glad to have been in the experiment
15.1%	I am neither sorry nor glad to have been in the experiment
01.3%	I am sorry/very sorry to have been in the experiment

Finally, Migram reported that one year after the experiment was completed, 40 subjects who a psychiatrist felt would be most likely to have suffered consequences were further evaluated. After examination, the psychiatrist conclued that although extreme stress had been experienced by several of the subjects during the experiment, none were found to having been harmed by their experience.


Informed Consent

The second major problem was the lack of "informed consent" [3]. Informed consent roughly means that the subject is given an accurate description of the the risks involved before he or she consents to participate in the experiment. Milgram's description of the experiment was deceptive: the subjects believed they were participating in an experiment on learning and memory.

The primary necessity for deception is to insure that the subjects will act naturally in the experiment. If they knew this was a study on obedience, then it might alter their behavior. For example, since we generally do not like to think of ourselves as blindly obedient, we might go out of our way to show the experiementer how independent we "really are". To complicate things, learning that one would be asked to administer a great deal of pain during the experiment would likely cause a large number of subjects to decline to be part of the experiment. The results of the experiment would only be generalizable to the those who agreed to participate. As a result, it would be easy for us to say that the obedience in the study was simply due to the fact that these were people who liked to inflict pain. And that would miss completely the chilling results of the study.





Selected References

[1] Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of research: After reading Milgram's 'Behavioral study of obedience. American Psychologist. 19, 421-423.

[2] Milgram, S. (1964), Ethical Issues in the Study of Obedience. In Milgram, S. (1977), The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments. Menlo Park, California: Addison-Wesly Publishing Company.

[3] Cozby, P. (1981), Methods in Behavioral Research, 2nd Edition. Palo Alto: Mayfield Publishing Company.

Links for further Reading
___ Conscience and Authority, Issues in Ethics - V. 1, N. 2 <http://www.scu.edu/Ethics/publications/iie/v1n2/conscience.shtml>