Talking about the ethics of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority experiments, it is necessary to view them from the position of human research subjects and as they were genuinely designed. On the one hand, these studies may be regarded as unethical from both perspectives, on the other hand, they are viewed as unethical for different reasons. For instance, experiments were initially unethical as they were based on deception – participants were not informed about a real purpose of studies. In this case, their voluntary consent related to it was not received as required by the Nuremberg Code (Moreno et al., 2017). At the same time, from the position of participants, artificial experiments were unethical as well as they involved harm to human research subjects and a limited ability to withdraw.
Although various sources of information are fully available to the public for education and self-development, I believe that in the present day, the results of the same experiments would not change from the studies of the past. People are genetically predisposed to obedience to authority figures in a formal environment, especially when they are told that everything is under control. It is extremely challenging to me to predict my behavior in the same situation. On the one hand, I trust scientists and their competence. On the other hand, I would feel extremely uncomfortable to be responsible for a person’s pain and probably stop participating.
It goes without saying that altruism and helping behavior are highly important, however, they are traditionally affected by multiple factors. Encountering people on the road who looked they needed help I would stop to help if I knew I had capacities for help, including time, occasion, and necessary equipment. At the same time, people may decide to help due to social responsibility, the feeling of justice, and individual peculiarities. In addition, according to the experiment conducted by Harms et al. (2017), people’s religious beliefs force them to help even against their free will. At the same time, people may not help due to the absence of inner desire to help or the fear of getting hurt on the basis of prejudice or propaganda. For instance, in the same case, they would not stop if individuals with a broken car are Blacks regarded as potentially dangerous.
References
Harms, J., Liket, K., Protzko, J., & Schölmerich, V. (2017). Free to help? An experiment on free will belief and altruism. PloS ONE, 12(3), 1-15. Web.
Moreno, J. D., Schmidt, U., & Joffe, S. (2017). The Nuremberg code 70 years later. JAMA, 318(9), 795-796. Web.