what exactly makes the milgram experiment unethical?

Question

i watched the milgram experiment video in my psychology class today and my teacher said that many psychologists consider this experiment unethical. I don't see how it could have been?

in fact what makes a psychological experiment unethical?

could you possibly name any websites that explain this?

Answer 1

Here's the ethics code for the American Psychological Association
http://www.kspope.com/ethics/ethics2.php

Answer 2

Milgram Experiment Unethical

Answer 3

Milgram's experiment raised questions about the ethics of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants. In Milgram's defence, 84 percent of former participants surveyed later said they were "glad" or "very glad" to have participated and 15 percent chose neutral (92% of all former participants responding). Many later wrote expressing thanks. Milgram repeatedly received offers of assistance and requests to join his staff from former participants. Six years later (during the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was "glad" to have been involved despite the apparent levels of stress:

While I was a subject [participant] 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. ... To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself. ... 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...

However, not everyone went through the life-changing experience reported by some former participants. Participants were not fully debriefed by modern standards, and exit interviews appeared to indicate that many seemed to never fully understand the nature of the experiment.

The experiments also raised criticism of a more emotional nature, which have more to do with the implications of the experiments than the ethicality of the setup. Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale, writes in Jewish Currents 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".[8] This was indeed one of the explicitly stated goals of the experiments. Quoting from the preface of Milgram's book, Obedience to Authority: "The question arises as to whether there is any connection between what we have studied in the laboratory and the forms of obedience we so deplored in the Nazi epoch."