Reference no: EM132799267

Stanley Milgram posed the research question: "How obedient are people?" Milgram's research was as follows.

1. An actor posing as a physician asked people recruited to the study to administer an electric shock to a confined test subject (also an actor) every time he or she got an answer wrong. (In actuality, no shock was administered, but the recruit did not know this.)
2. The amount of shock administered increased with the number of wrong answers, to points well beyond the danger level.
3. Many people were willing to administer the maximum shock even though the test subjects were screaming.
4. After the experiments the recruits were debriefed as to the nature of the experiment.

The same experiment was administered in various countries with the same result. Many people were willing to accept the authority of the person they thought was a physician and administer the maximum shock, despite the pain of the test subject. The implication is that individuals of various nationalities are prepared to accept authority - "I was only following orders."

Is this ethical research? Why? Why not? What are the ethical principals involved? Could the data have been obtained in any other way?