HYPOTHETICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN DR. STANLEY MILGRAM AND TAKIKO
Takiko: Hello Dr. Milgram? My name is Takiko and would like to know more about your experiment about the conflict between obedience to the authority and the personal conscience of a person.
Dr. Stanley Milgram: Hi Takiko. It is fine with me to let you know more about the experiment I conducted about obedience and personal conscience. What would you like to know bout it?
Takiko: In the experiment that you did, what was your research question?
Dr. Stanley Milgram: In my experiment I was trying to understand the facts on people obeying orders from authority and the sense of the people’s personal conscience. For example, during a crisis between two parties, those under the law can get orders from above. The laws must be adhered to regardless of how unreasonable or inhumane the orders given will be.
Takiko: After doing the experiment, were the results reliable and valid that could not be argued later.
Dr. Stanley Milgram: I did start the experiment in 1961, this was the year that Adolf Eichmannand some other million accomplices were following orders from the authority. I wanted to know whether the Germans were following authority orders and whether the obedience was the common explanation concerning the Nazi killings (Milgram, S). The information was reliable because the people were grouped n pairs where one was to be a “teacher” and the other person to be the “learner”. The information and results received were valid because the exercise had been gazette. Ordinary people are easily influenced in committing atrocities.
Takiko: Ok Dr. Milgram, what was the sample that you used in your experiment?
Dr. Stanley Milgram: The sample that is used in my experiment was comprised of only male participants. In fact, the participants were 40 in number, and they aged between 20 and 50 years old. The participants included unskilled and professional workers. The selected sample was attached electrodes to their arms in a room. The participants were given electric shocks any time they gave a wrong answer to the questions asked by the teacher in the lab room. In the experiment, there were four prods and when one of them was not obeyed the experimenter could go ahead and read the next prod. In every experiment, Milgram altered the situation to see how the participants obeyed (Milgram, S).
Takiko: Of the sample that you used in your experiment, was it representative?
Dr. Stanley Milgram: The response to legitimate authority is learned right from people’s families, school, and extends to the workplace. The sample did not represent the entire population because it was self-selected and it comprised of only male participants. According to my opinion, the sample that I selected did not represent the population of America and by so it was biased (Milgram, S).
Takiko: What were some of your research ethical problems that you encountered?
Dr. Stanley Milgram: In conducting my experiment, there was deception. The participants had consent that they were applying a shock to real human beings. It is believed that illusion …
