Obedience in Psychology - Essay Example

In an investigative disobedience experiment, Milgram acquired forty volunteers through newspaper advertisement. Milgram wanted to measure the willingness of the participants to act contrary to their conscience by obeying an authority figure and inflicting pain imaginary using electric shocks on students who were his confederates every time they made an error. The participant was also required to increase the level of shock every instance a student made an error. Milgram’s obedience experiment proved to be unethical because he used pretense to obtain data. After all, the students have not tested subjects but Milgram's assistant. Moreover, the electric shock never caused harm to the student but they pretended to be in pain when the teachers administered electric shock (Blass, 2000). It was also unethical to subject people to a tense situation, which caused a lot of stress to them. Thus, it was unethical for Milgram to design an experiment that created such kind of stress. Ultimately, the experiment also has been linked to long-term psychological harm.  This is unethical as it would cause a negative long-term psychological impact on the subjects on realizing they would inflict such lethal shock levels on fellow human beings.