The Man Who Shocked the World
1. Critics of Milgram’s research have argued that the physical separation between the participant
and the teacher in one room and the learner in the other made it easier for the participant to
inflict the shocks. Do you think that made a difference? Why or why not?
I think it did make a difference for the teacher and the learner to be in separate rooms. Being in
different rooms, the teacher could shock the learner without getting so personal with the learner,
making it more manageable. If being in the same room, the teacher might expect them to be faking.
2. The treatment of the participants in the study raised as much criticism as the results the study
generated. Was it ethical to mislead them into believing that they were really inflicting pain
on the learners? Why?
If Milgram had informed the participants that they were not inflicting pain on the learners, then the
experiment would have been lost. Not knowing the participants behaved and responded in a real
matter. The shocks were not genuinely given to the learners. I don’t think it is unethical that they were
deceived. I think it would have been unethical if the shocks were real.
