The Milgram Experiment Reloaded

Derren Brown reproduces the Milgram experiment

Tags: psychology/social psychology, methodology/statistics, authority, ethics, milgram experiment, 06 to 10 mins
Year: 2007
Length: 10:47
Access: YouTube

Summary: In this clip, Derren Brown of "The Heist" reproduces the Milgram experiment. As in the original, participants are asked to administer electrical shocks to a "learner." While Brown narrates the camera captures all the anxiety, trepidation, and ultimately, the compliance of study participants. The clip is useful for giving students a sense of an experimental research design, but it also serves as an excellent means of opening up discussion about ethics. Namely, is it ethical to make people believe-even if temporarily-they are causing harm to others? Was it an ethical experiment, given what many subjects learned about themselves, that they would administer lethal shocks to people simply because a man in a white lab coat told them to?

Submitted By: Lester Andrist

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