Learn Before
Explain how Stanley Milgram's classic obedience study illustrates the ethical difficulty of weighing research risks against benefits. In your explanation, identify who bore the risks versus who benefited from the study, specify the physical and psychological reactions participants experienced, and explain the role of deception in creating those risks.
Question: Explain how Stanley Milgram's classic obedience study illustrates the ethical difficulty of weighing research risks against benefits. In your explanation, identify who bore the risks versus who benefited from the study, specify the physical and psychological reactions participants experienced, and explain the role of deception in creating those risks.
Sample answer: Milgram's study illustrates the difficulty of weighing research risks against benefits because the distribution of these outcomes was unequal: the participants bore the immediate risks, while society received the long-term scientific benefits. Specifically, participants experienced severe psychological stress and extreme physical tension, including trembling and seizures, because they were deceptively led to believe they were administering painful electric shocks to a confederate. Meanwhile, the resulting scientific knowledge about destructive obedience primarily benefited society rather than the participants themselves.
Key points:
- Weighing risks against benefits is difficult because participants bore the risks while society benefited from the scientific knowledge.
- Participants experienced extreme physical and psychological tension, including trembling and seizures.
- The stress was caused by deception, leading participants to believe they were administering painful electric shocks to a confederate.
Rubric: To receive full credit, the answer must identify that the participants bore the risks while society benefited; mention specific participant reactions (extreme tension, trembling, or seizures); and explain that the deception (believing they were shocking a confederate) was the source of the psychological stress.
0
1
Tags
KPU
Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
Related
Ethical Evaluation of a Landmark Obedience Study
In Milgram's original obedience study, what were participants deceived into believing they were doing to the confederate?
A key reason the ethical debate over the Milgram experiment is so difficult to resolve is that the risks (severe psychological harm) were borne by the participants, while the benefits (insights into destructive obedience) accrued primarily to society—meaning the costs and gains did not fall on the same people.
Match each research ethics concept to the specific way it was present in Milgram's obedience study.
Evaluating the ethical balance of Milgram's study requires analyzing the distribution of study outcomes, where the severe psychological stress was borne by the _____ while the resulting scientific knowledge primarily benefited society.
Order the phases of the Milgram experiment from the initial exposure to research risk through the mitigation steps designed to address the ethical balance of the study.
An institutional review board (IRB) is evaluating a proposed study on obedience. In this study, participants will be led to believe they are causing mild distress to another person, which is expected to cause the participants significant temporary anxiety. The researcher argues that this psychological discomfort is justified because the study will yield critical insights into how authority figures influence group behavior. This conflict highlights which core ethical challenge of research design?
Explain how Stanley Milgram's classic obedience study illustrates the ethical difficulty of weighing research risks against benefits. In your explanation, identify who bore the risks versus who benefited from the study, specify the physical and psychological reactions participants experienced, and explain the role of deception in creating those risks.
Apply the ethical debate surrounding the Milgram obedience study to this new research proposal. Justify whether the researcher's plan to debrief participants is sufficient to resolve the ethical conflict of inflicting high psychological stress. What central debate about the balance of risks and benefits remains unresolved by the debriefing process?
Analyze how the post-study feedback from Milgram's participants complicates the argument that his study was entirely unethical. How does this feedback affect the evaluation of the study's overall risk-benefit balance?