{"id":903,"date":"2016-03-10T08:30:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=903"},"modified":"2016-03-09T18:31:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T00:31:48","slug":"milgrams-shocking-social-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2016\/03\/10\/milgrams-shocking-social-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Milgram’s Shocking Social Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Peter<\/a>
Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram in “Experimenter.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Late last fall, Experimenter<\/a> <\/em>brought classic experimental social science to Hollywood (it\u2019s currently streaming on Netflix). The film depicts Stanley Milgram\u2019s classic experimental obedience studies, where participants were asked by an experimenter to deliver a series of escalating shocks to a \u201clearner\u201d when he\/she committed an error on a test. Unbeknownst to the participants, the \u201clearner\u201d was actually a confederate, and no shocks were actually delivered. Milgram found that 65% of the participants escalated to \u201cdelivering\u201d the final 450-volt shock—far past dangerous levels. Milgram performed 19 variations of the experiment, including increasing the proximity of the participant and learner (that is, making them better known to each other, which decreased participant compliance) and using only females (which yielded similar results). Apart from the studies\u2019 success at demonstrating the social forces that shape behavior, they have been a cornerstone of ethics in research debates in the social sciences.<\/p>\n

Early critics claimed that the participants\u2019 well-being was put at risk, due to the \u201cdistress [that] may have resulted from shock at what the experimenter was doing to them as well as from what they thought they were doing to their victims\u201d (Baumrind 423).<\/h5>\n