Due to the relative modernity of psychology and its everyday applicability, the field’s experiments which are now deemed controversial and unethical, of which all scientific fields have their own, have a heightened presence in our society’s consciousness. Two of these experiments, the Milgram Obedience Study and Stanford Prison Experiment, are still under constant review by experts and psychologists today for their ethical and moral issues. Despite these concerns, the community is unanimous that the experiments were vital to our current knowledge of social psychology, leading to the question of what constitutes excessive unethicality in comparison to psychological breakthrough.
The Milgram Obedience Study, conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram of Yale University, tested the amount of pain an individual can inflict on someone else--an act meant to go against their morality--when explicitly told to do so by a person in authority. The subject, who believed he was randomly assigned the role of teacher (a confederate of the study was always the learner), would test the learner on word pairs they had studied previously. As the learner answered incorrectly, the teacher would shock him with an electric current, despite the learner exclaiming in pain and directly telling him to stop. Each time a shock was performed, the voltage increased on a control that clearly labeled the lethality of the shock, ending in lethal. As the dependent variable was the amount of pain inflicted on the learner, independent variables included physical proximity and mental/visual immediacy to both the authority figure and the learner, e.g., the authority being in another room, communicating through a speaker vs. standing right next to the teacher.
Dr. Milgram concocted this study as a small-scale version of the same psychological phenomena that allowed German citizens in the 1930s and 40s to follow their new charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, into territory of hateful policies and actions which went against the majority’s morality. Just how much are people willing to do against their conscience if faced with an assertive authority figure? As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as ‘greater than thou,’ and that no universe exists in which we could possibly partake in an event like the Holocaust, or even be complicit to it; in our minds, we are each the Dr. Stockmann of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, who will stand up to the establishment, no matter the consequences. This study, however, shows a stark discrepancy between our idealized selves and reality; nearly two-thirds of participants of the study progressed fully to the highest shock level.
After screams of pain: they continued--pleas of humanity from the learner: they continued--the absence of an answer, symbolizing an inability to speak: they continued--and, finally, the absence of any reaction at all, representing death of the learner: they continued.
This discrepancy between idyll and reality is the main argument against the ethicality of the Milgram study, and is also at the forefront of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Male Stanford University students, looking for an extra buck, are randomly assigned positions as either prisoners or guards. The guards are told they have personality traits that make them well-suited to be a guard, serving both as an ego boost and a placebo that they now might feel more empowered to be alpha-guards. The prisoners appear to be placed under arrest, are picked up at their homes, handcuffed, and blinded by a sack placed over their heads--an unorthodox practice for arrests, signalling that this whole experience will be an exaggerated take on a prison. Without much ado, the experiment progresses to a state of tyranny, with sadistic guards and rebellious prisoners. I will not give a surplus of details here.
The discrepancy enters because we--the general masses, viewing the experiment as spectators--view the authoritarian guards as an ‘other,’ an outgroup upon which to cast judgment. Not only that, but we also don’t identify with the revolting, tumult-causing prisoners. The average person sees themself as a well-behaved, decent person, no matter their role in the study (since it was assigned randomly in the first place). The Stanford Prison Experiment widens the discrepancy further than the Milgram study because the immoral act in the latter--the shocks--could be defended as the modus operandi for the end goal of learning the pairs of words. In the former, however, the immoral acts that transpired, particularly by the guards, have no rational justification to them; they are not the means to an end.
Through these studies, we have learned of this discrepancy, but just how much should humans know about ourselves? Participants in both of the previous studies report mental distress caused by knowing what they are capable of doing to others. If these studies answer some of what we are capable of doing, then another study we’ve explored answers what we are not capable of doing. In the film, Three Identical Strangers, the public is informed of a study promulgated in the 1960s (I will refer to it from now on as the ‘Louise Wise study,’ after the adoption agency involved) which aimed to split up identical twins and triplets put up for adoption, designed to be the ultimate test of the nature vs. nurture debate. On a humanitarian level, most people are already against this study at the thought of separating infants from their twins; the film even outlines that the toddlers would hit their heads against walls or crib, which they now believe to be separation anxiety. More issues arise in the years following the exposure of the study. It was discovered when two of the triplets end up at the same community college, one year apart, and a mutual friend brings them together, as they’re nearly identical. This ‘long lost brother’ trope brings the story to national attention, when a third brother, appearing the exact same as those two, sees the picture, and makes a call. Eventually, the three are reunited, and begin to make sense of it all. Truly surprising in all of this is just how similar the three boys were: they all wrestled in high school, they talk the same way, they have the same taste in girls, and so on.
Naturally, the media sensationalized this story to death, and the three brothers went along with it, conducted many interviews, but this served to reveal a theory of how little of our ‘choices’ are in our control. These three men, sharing only their DNA, led almost identical lives until the age of nineteen. If our genetics control that much, then what choices do we really make? This question, almost too much for those outside the study to grapple with, did a considerable amount of mental strain and trauma to the three men, leading one of them to commit suicide at the age of 34. After this tragedy, the two remaining brothers learn that their mother also dealt with mental illness, asking another question on if even our own mental health is in our DNA. If the Milgram study and the Stanford Prison Experiment ask the choices we are capable of making, then the Louise Wise study asks what choices do we have, and what choices are already made for us.
These studies serve to show us some real psychological problems faced by researchers, and even answer them for us, just not in ways we would like to have them answered. Of course, these studies would never be allowed to take place today, with fifty years of further scientific advancement. That, however, does not make the questions go away; Pandora’s box has been opened, and can not be shut again.
The Milgram Obedience Study, conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram of Yale University, tested the amount of pain an individual can inflict on someone else--an act meant to go against their morality--when explicitly told to do so by a person in authority. The subject, who believed he was randomly assigned the role of teacher (a confederate of the study was always the learner), would test the learner on word pairs they had studied previously. As the learner answered incorrectly, the teacher would shock him with an electric current, despite the learner exclaiming in pain and directly telling him to stop. Each time a shock was performed, the voltage increased on a control that clearly labeled the lethality of the shock, ending in lethal. As the dependent variable was the amount of pain inflicted on the learner, independent variables included physical proximity and mental/visual immediacy to both the authority figure and the learner, e.g., the authority being in another room, communicating through a speaker vs. standing right next to the teacher.
Dr. Milgram concocted this study as a small-scale version of the same psychological phenomena that allowed German citizens in the 1930s and 40s to follow their new charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, into territory of hateful policies and actions which went against the majority’s morality. Just how much are people willing to do against their conscience if faced with an assertive authority figure? As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as ‘greater than thou,’ and that no universe exists in which we could possibly partake in an event like the Holocaust, or even be complicit to it; in our minds, we are each the Dr. Stockmann of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, who will stand up to the establishment, no matter the consequences. This study, however, shows a stark discrepancy between our idealized selves and reality; nearly two-thirds of participants of the study progressed fully to the highest shock level.
After screams of pain: they continued--pleas of humanity from the learner: they continued--the absence of an answer, symbolizing an inability to speak: they continued--and, finally, the absence of any reaction at all, representing death of the learner: they continued.
This discrepancy between idyll and reality is the main argument against the ethicality of the Milgram study, and is also at the forefront of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Male Stanford University students, looking for an extra buck, are randomly assigned positions as either prisoners or guards. The guards are told they have personality traits that make them well-suited to be a guard, serving both as an ego boost and a placebo that they now might feel more empowered to be alpha-guards. The prisoners appear to be placed under arrest, are picked up at their homes, handcuffed, and blinded by a sack placed over their heads--an unorthodox practice for arrests, signalling that this whole experience will be an exaggerated take on a prison. Without much ado, the experiment progresses to a state of tyranny, with sadistic guards and rebellious prisoners. I will not give a surplus of details here.
The discrepancy enters because we--the general masses, viewing the experiment as spectators--view the authoritarian guards as an ‘other,’ an outgroup upon which to cast judgment. Not only that, but we also don’t identify with the revolting, tumult-causing prisoners. The average person sees themself as a well-behaved, decent person, no matter their role in the study (since it was assigned randomly in the first place). The Stanford Prison Experiment widens the discrepancy further than the Milgram study because the immoral act in the latter--the shocks--could be defended as the modus operandi for the end goal of learning the pairs of words. In the former, however, the immoral acts that transpired, particularly by the guards, have no rational justification to them; they are not the means to an end.
Through these studies, we have learned of this discrepancy, but just how much should humans know about ourselves? Participants in both of the previous studies report mental distress caused by knowing what they are capable of doing to others. If these studies answer some of what we are capable of doing, then another study we’ve explored answers what we are not capable of doing. In the film, Three Identical Strangers, the public is informed of a study promulgated in the 1960s (I will refer to it from now on as the ‘Louise Wise study,’ after the adoption agency involved) which aimed to split up identical twins and triplets put up for adoption, designed to be the ultimate test of the nature vs. nurture debate. On a humanitarian level, most people are already against this study at the thought of separating infants from their twins; the film even outlines that the toddlers would hit their heads against walls or crib, which they now believe to be separation anxiety. More issues arise in the years following the exposure of the study. It was discovered when two of the triplets end up at the same community college, one year apart, and a mutual friend brings them together, as they’re nearly identical. This ‘long lost brother’ trope brings the story to national attention, when a third brother, appearing the exact same as those two, sees the picture, and makes a call. Eventually, the three are reunited, and begin to make sense of it all. Truly surprising in all of this is just how similar the three boys were: they all wrestled in high school, they talk the same way, they have the same taste in girls, and so on.
Naturally, the media sensationalized this story to death, and the three brothers went along with it, conducted many interviews, but this served to reveal a theory of how little of our ‘choices’ are in our control. These three men, sharing only their DNA, led almost identical lives until the age of nineteen. If our genetics control that much, then what choices do we really make? This question, almost too much for those outside the study to grapple with, did a considerable amount of mental strain and trauma to the three men, leading one of them to commit suicide at the age of 34. After this tragedy, the two remaining brothers learn that their mother also dealt with mental illness, asking another question on if even our own mental health is in our DNA. If the Milgram study and the Stanford Prison Experiment ask the choices we are capable of making, then the Louise Wise study asks what choices do we have, and what choices are already made for us.
These studies serve to show us some real psychological problems faced by researchers, and even answer them for us, just not in ways we would like to have them answered. Of course, these studies would never be allowed to take place today, with fifty years of further scientific advancement. That, however, does not make the questions go away; Pandora’s box has been opened, and can not be shut again.
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