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How did some experimenters depart from the planned script in Stanley Milgram’s studies?
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Stanley Milgram
American social psychologist Stanley Milgram with the “shock generator” used in his famous experiment at Yale University in the 1960s.
In the Milgram experiment, researchers conducting the sessions occasionally departed from the established script in their efforts to coerce participants into continuing the administration of electric shocks.
While the experimenter was intended to use specific, scripted responses to encourage the "teacher" to proceed, later examinations of Stanley Milgram’s data revealed that these authority figures sometimes deviated from these instructions to maintain pressure on the subjects. These departures, along with the overall design of the study, have contributed to ongoing debates regarding the reliability of Milgram’s findings and the ethical standards of his research.1