The Aftereffects of Milgram’s Study: Were Subjects Harmed? Milgram’s findings were disturbing. But some psychologists found his methods equally upsetting. To psychologist Diana Baumrind (1964), it was unethical for Milgram to subject his participants to that level of emotional stress, humiliation, and loss of dignity. But Milgram (1964) countered that he had not set out to create stress in his subjects. It was his unanticipated results, not his methods, that disturbed people. Who would object to his experiment, he asked, “if everyone had broken off at ‘slight shock’ or at the first sign of the learner’s discomfort?” Concerns were also expressed that participants would experience serious aftereffects from the experiment. However, in a follow-up questionnaire, 84 percent of participants in Milgram’s experiment indicated that they were “glad to have taken part in the experiment,” and only about 1 percent regretted participating (Milgram, 1974b).
From the film Obedience © 1968 by Stanley Milgram, © renewed 1993 by Alexandra Milgram; and distributed by Alexander Street Press.