Milgrams electric shock experiment was conducted at Yale University to test obedience to authority figures. The study involved participants who self selected and were paid. When they turned up they met a two confederates, the examiner and the other participant. They were told that they would be randomly allocated either the learner or teacher role when really the study was rigged so that the subject would always be the teacher. The subject was then told to ask a series of questions to the learner and administer a series of increasingly strong electric shocks if they got the answer wrong. The study found that 65% of subjects administered the highest electric shock and all the participants administered enough shocks to have killed the learner.
One Main ethical disadvantage to the study was impact on the participants. Many of the subjects appeared stressed and emotional. This is a weakness as the study could have had long and short term emotional impacts.
Furthermore, the participants did not give informed consent as they were deceived. This is an ethical disadvantage because the participants didn't understand what they were signing up for
Another disadvantage is the study lacked ecological validity. This is because it was conducted in a lab setting which means it cannot be generalized to real life situations
Furthermore the study only involved males which means that the results might not be representative of wider society, for example women, so its conclusions might not be applicable to everyone.
On the other hand an advantage of the study is that it is highly reliable. As the control in place, such as the rigged structure and recordings that were used, mean it could easily be replicated.