4.2 Moral ecologies in corporate governance  (Page 2/8)

However, these instructions constituted a deception brought upon the teacher/subject by the secret collaboration of the experimenter and the learner. The real purpose of the experiment was to determine how far the teacher/subject would go in turning against his or her moral views at the urging of an external authority. The learner feigned pain and suffering because there was no actual electrical shock. The learner also deliberately missed most of the questions in order to force the teacher to progress to higher and what appeared to be life-threatening levels of shock. While teachers were not physically forced to continue the experiment over the feigned protests of the learners, whenever they tried to stop it, they were told by the experimenter that they had to continue to the end.

Before the Milgram experiments were carried out, a group of psychogists were asked to predict how many teachers/subjects would go all the way to the end and give the learner what they thought were life-threatening and highly painful shocks. The consensus was that most would stop the experiment early on when the learner first began to protest. But the actual results went contrary to these predictions. Over 60 percent of the teachers went all the way and gave the learner the maximum shock. You can read more about these experiments and how they have been interpreted by reading Milgram 1974 and Flanagan 1991. You Tube has several video vignettes on the Milgram Experiments. Simply type "Milgram Experiments" in the search window and browse the results.

Milgram argued that his research demonstrated a propensity to delegate moral authority for one’s immoral actions to those in positions of power and authority. Others have pushed these results further to assert situationalism, i.e., the claim that forces arising in situations can overpower and annul the expression in action of self, character, and character traits. In addition to what Milgram claims, opponents of virtue theory would claim that Milgram’s experiments offer conclusive proof that moral exemplars, i.e.,individuals who exhibit sustained moral careers through the strength of their characters and moral virtues, do not exist and cannot exist (See Gilbert Harmon). And setting forth these so-called moral exemplars as models imposes on students moral standards that are not minimally, psychologically realistic.

Thought experiment: zimbardo and the standford prison experiment

In many ways, Zimbardo’s experiments appear equally damaging to virtue and moral exemplar theory. Students were recruited to take part in a prison experiment. After being carefully screened for any abnormal psychological traits, they were randomly assigned the roles of prisoner guard and prisoner. The prisoners were arrested at their homes and taken to the psychology building at Stanford University whose basement had been made over to resemble a prison. The experiment was designed to last for two weeks but was halted mid-way because of its harmful impacts on the subjects. The guards abused the prisoners, physically and psychologically; individuals who behaved normally before the experiment, became sadistic when playing through the prison guard role. The prisoners were traumatized by their experience and many experienced breakdowns; all testified to how they forgot who they were before the experiment began; their normal identities were absorbed and cancelled by their new identities stemming from the role “prisoner” and from the dehumanizing treatment they received from the guards.