Editing Milgram experiment (section)

==Critical reception==
===Ethics===
Milgram’s experiment raised immediate controversy about the [[research ethics]] of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress and [[inflicted insight]] suffered by the participants. On June 10, 1964, the ''[[American Psychologist]]'' published a brief but influential article by [[Diana Baumrind]] titled "Some Thoughts on Ethics of Research: After Reading Milgram's 'Behavioral Study of Obedience.{{' "}} She argued that even though Milgram had obtained informed consent, he was still ethically responsible to ensure their well-being. When participants displayed signs of distress such as sweating and trembling, the experimenter should have stepped in and halted the experiment. Baumrind's criticisms of the treatment of human participants in Milgram's studies stimulated a thorough revision of the ethical standards of psychological research.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Today in the History of Psychology &#91;licensed for non-commercial use only&#93; / June 10 |url=http://todayinpsychologyhistory.pbworks.com/w/page/127018286/June%2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190128082853/http://todayinpsychologyhistory.pbworks.com/w/page/127018286/June%2010 |archive-date=January 28, 2019 |access-date=January 27, 2019}}</ref>

Milgram vigorously defended the experiment. He conducted a survey of former participants in which 84% said they were "glad" or "very glad" to have participated; 15% chose neutral responses (92% of all former participants responding).<ref>{{harvnb|Milgram|1974|p=195}}</ref> In his 1974 book ''[[Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View|Obedience to Authority]]'', Milgram described receiving offers of assistance, requests to join his staff, and letters of thanks from former participants. Six years later (at the height of the [[Vietnam War]]), one of the participants in the experiment wrote to Milgram, explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress:

{{Blockquote|While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority&nbsp;... To permit myself to be [[Conscription in the United States|drafted]] with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself&nbsp;... I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted [[Conscientious Objector]] status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience&nbsp;...<ref>{{cite book |author=Raiten-D'Antonio, Toni |title=Ugly as Sin: The Truth about How We Look and Finding Freedom from Self-Hatred |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=j4ijAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA89 |date=1 September 2010 |publisher=HCI |isbn=978-0-7573-1465-0|page=89}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Milgram|1974|p=200}}</ref>}}

In contrast, critics such as Gina Perry argued that participants were not properly debriefed, leading to lasting emotional harm, and that many participants in fact criticized the ethics of the study in their responses to the questionnaire.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Perry |first=Gina |date=2013 |title=Deception and Illusion in Milgram's Accounts of the Obedience Experiments |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317914282 |journal=Theoretical & Applied Ethics, University of Nebraska Press |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=79–92 |access-date=October 25, 2016}}</ref>

===Applicability to the Holocaust===
Milgram sparked direct critical response in the scientific community by claiming that "a common psychological process is centrally involved in both [his laboratory experiments and Nazi Germany] events."{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}} [[James Waller]], chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at [[Keene State College]], formerly chair of [[Whitworth College]] Psychology Department, argued that Milgram experiments “do not correspond well” to the Holocaust events:<ref name="Waller-111" /> His points were as follows:

# The subjects of Milgram experiments were assured in advance that no permanent physical damage would result from their actions. However, the Holocaust perpetrators were fully aware of their hands-on killing and maiming of the victims.
# The laboratory subjects themselves did not know their victims and were not motivated by racism or other biases. On the other hand, the Holocaust perpetrators displayed an intense devaluation of the victims through a lifetime of personal development.
# Those serving punishment at the lab were not sadists, nor hate-mongers, and often exhibited great anguish and conflict in the experiment,<ref name="ObedStudy" /> unlike the designers and executioners of the [[Final Solution]], who had a clear "goal" on their hands, set beforehand.
# The experiment lasted for an hour, with no time for the subjects to contemplate the implications of their behavior. Meanwhile, the Holocaust lasted for years with ample time for a moral assessment of all individuals and organizations involved.<ref name="Waller-111">{{cite book |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=5QRHKMa_rqgC&pg=PA111 |title= Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing |chapter= What Can the Milgram Studies Teach Us about Perpetrators of Extraordinary Evil? |publisher= [[Oxford University Press]] |date= February 22, 2007 |access-date= June 9, 2013 |author= James Waller |pages=111–113 |chapter-format= Google Books |isbn= 978-0199774852 |author-link= James Waller}}</ref>

In the opinion of Thomas Blass—who is the author of a scholarly monograph on the experiment (''The Man Who Shocked The World'') published in 2004—the historical evidence pertaining to actions of the Holocaust perpetrators speaks louder than words:

{{Blockquote|My own view is that Milgram's approach does not provide a fully adequate explanation of the Holocaust. While it may well account for the dutiful destructiveness of the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven, it falls short when one tries to apply it to the more zealous, inventive, and hate-driven atrocities that also characterized the Holocaust.<ref name="Blass">{{cite web | url=http://analyse-und-kritik.net/en/1998-1/AK_Blass_1998.pdf | title=The Roots of Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments and Their Relevance to the Holocaust | publisher=Analyse und Kritik.net | year=2013 | access-date=20 July 2013 | author=Blass, Thomas | format=PDF file, direct download 733 KB | page=51 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029190232/http://analyse-und-kritik.net/en/1998-1/AK_Blass_1998.pdf | archive-date=29 October 2013 }}</ref>}}

===Validity===
In a 2004 issue of the journal ''[[Jewish Currents]]'', Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dimow |first=Joseph |url=http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2004-jan-dimow.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040202065547/https://jewishcurrents.org/2004-jan-dimow.htm |archive-date=February 2, 2004|title=Resisting Authority: A Personal Account of the Milgram Obedience Experiments |journal=Jewish Currents |date=January 2004}}</ref>

In 2012, Australian psychologist Gina Perry investigated Milgram's data and writings and concluded that Milgram had manipulated the results, and that there was a "troubling mismatch between (published) descriptions of the experiment and evidence of what actually transpired." She wrote that "only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter".<ref name="perry">{{cite book |first=Gina |last=Perry |date=April 26, 2012 |title=Behind the Shock Machine: the untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments |publisher=[[The New Press]] |isbn=978-1921844553}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Perry |first=Gina |title=Deception and Illusion in Milgram's Accounts of the Obedience Experiments |date=2013 |journal=Theoretical & Applied Ethics |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=79–92 |issn=2156-7174 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317914282 |access-date=29 August 2019}}</ref> She described her findings as "an unexpected outcome" that "leaves social psychology in a difficult situation."<ref>{{cite interview |interviewer=[[NPR]] Staff |first=Gina |last=Perry |url=https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study |title=Taking A Closer Look At Milgram's Shocking Obedience Study |publisher=[[NPR]] |work=All Things Considered |date=August 28, 2013 |access-date=October 22, 2018 |archive-date=October 22, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181022080226/https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study |url-status=live }}</ref>

In a book review critical of Gina Perry's findings, Nestar Russell and John Picard take issue with Perry for not mentioning that "there have been well over a score, not just several, replications or slight variations on Milgram's basic experimental procedure, and these have been performed in many different countries, several different settings and using different types of victims. And most, although certainly not all of these experiments have tended to lend weight to Milgram's original findings."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Russell |first1=Nestar |last2=Picard |first2=John |title=Gina Perry. ''Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments'' |journal=Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences |date=2013 |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=221–223 |doi=10.1002/jhbs.21599 |department=Book Reviews}}</ref>