Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments

In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements in MT/STS1

Submitted by:

Group 4

Alvanrhyl Ampo

Mark Artieda

Neil Adryan Dacudao

Daniel Tristan Espanola

Jastine May Cabrillos

Robin Carla Feliciano

Chareon Kaye Saljay

Submitted to:

Professor Maria Bea C. Lao, RMT

Date Submitted:

September 17, 2011

Introduction

“Obedience is the mother of success and the wife of security.”

- Aeschylus, Greek Dramatist, 525-456 B.C.

When people are ordered by an

authority figure to engage in a particular

behaviour, you might expect that their

need for personal control would result in a

good deal of disobedience. If the order

was to engage in behaviour that appeared

to pose serious health risks to others, you

might predict that wide-scale

disobedience would occur. Would it? What

would you do under such circumstances?

Stanley Milgram (August 15, 1933 – December 20, 1984) was an

American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known

as Milgram’s Obedience Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s

during Milgram’s professorship at Yale University.

One factor that led to the obedience study was Milgram’s concern for

the Holocaust. The experiment was designed as a response to the notorious

trials of Nazi war criminals, who claimed that they were “just following

orders”. He wanted to establish whether people really would obey authority

figures, even when the instructions given were morally wrong.

The virtual annihilation of the European Jewish community could not

have happened without the cooperation of thousands of ordinary citizens –

bureaucrats, soldiers, janitors, doctors, railroad workers, carpenters. Why did

so many people comply with the Nazi regime? Did their compliance emerge

from pathological characteristics of the German people? Or, more

frighteningly, did following orders arise out of the normal operation of

everyday social processes, such as simple obedience to authority? To answer

these questions, let’s explore the most discussed social psychological study

ever conducted by Stanley Milgram.

Main Body

In the 1960’s, Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974) designed a series of

laboratory experiments to understand the issues involved in obedience to

authority. Milgram’s work has become an enduring classic in social

psychology. He began his research by placing newspaper ads asking for men

to participate in a psychology study. The volunteers were scheduled in pairs

and were told that the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of

punishment on learning. One of them was selected by chance as the

“learner” and the other as the “teacher”. The teacher’s job was to read aloud

pairs of words that the learner was supposed to memorize. Each time the

learner made a mistake, the teacher was to administer a punishment.

The teacher sat in front of a

large, impressive “shock machine”

containing a long series of levers,

each labelled with the amount of

shock it would deliver. The range was

from 15-450 volts. Above the

numbers representing voltage were

labels describing the severity of the shock such as “Slight”, “Extreme

Intensity Shock”, and “Danger: Severe Shock”.

The learner was put in a chair in another room. His arm was strapped

down to the chair and electrodes were taped to his arm. He could not be

seen by the teacher or anyone else; they communicated entirely by

intercom. Before the testing began, the learner mentioned that he had a

slightly weak heart. He was assured by the experimenter that the shocks

were not dangerous. Then the experimenter gave the teacher a sample

shock, to give him some idea of what the shocks he would be delivering felt

like. It was actually fairly severe and hurt considerably, but the teacher was

told it was a mild shock.

During the testing, the learner made a number

of errors. Each time, the teacher told him he was

wrong and delivered a shock. Whenever a shock

was given, the learner grunted. As the level of

shock increased, the learner’s reactions became

increasingly dramatic. He yelled, begged the

teacher to stop shocking him, pounded the

table, and kicked the wall. Toward the end, he

simply stopped answering and made no

response at all. Through all this, the experimenter urged the teacher to

continue: “Please continue”. “The experiment must go on”. “It is necessary

for you to continue”. The subject was assured that the responsibility was the

experimenter’s and not his.

Under these circumstances, a

large number of subjects

dutifully delivered supposedly

severe electric shocks. The

results were summarized in

Table 1.The results were as

follows: All 40 subjects delivered

the 300-volt shock, and 65

percent continued to the final

450-volt level. They did this

even though the person they

were shocking screamed for

mercy, had a heart condition, and was apparently experiencing great pain. In

reality, of course, the “learner” was a confederate of the experimenter and

Table 1

did not receive any shocks. All responses, including errors, grunts and groans

were carefully rehearsed and then tape-recorded to make them identical for

all subjects. The “teacher”, however, had no way of knowing that the

situation was staged.

In a series of 18 studies, Milgram identified conditions that increase or

decrease obedience. The table below summarizes Milgram’s findings.

Situations that made individuals feel more responsible for their own actions

or that emphasized the suffering of the victim reduced the amount of

obedience. Say for example, bringing the victim closer to the subject

substantially reduced obedience. Obedience was greatest when the victim

was in

another

room and

could not be

heard or

could be

heard only

through an

intercom.

Obedience

decreased

when the victim was in the same room and it dropped still more when the

subject had to touch the victim to administer the shock. Reminding subjects

of their own personal responsibility for their actions also reduced the number

of shocks they administered.

Milgram also found that physical presence of the experimenter made a

difference. Obedience was greatest when the experimenter was in the same

room with the subject and decreased if the experimenter communicated by

phone from another room or simply left tape-recorded instructions. It was

harder to disobey the authority figure if he was closely monitoring the

subject’s behaviour. Finally, in other variations of the experiment, subjects

administered shocks as part of a group of teachers. (In reality, only one of

the teachers was a naive subject.) When the real subject merely watched as

peers administered shocks, 93 percents of subjects obeyed the experimenter

fully. In contrast, when two defiant peers (actually confederates) stopped

administering shocks early in the experiment, 90 percent of subjects also

stopped. The behaviour of peers proved a powerful force that could support-

or defy – the authority of the experimenter.

Participants in the Milgram studies often experienced considerable

stress. Some began to sweat; others broke out into nervous laughter or

stuttered. They often pleaded with the experimenter to end the study. The

subjects were not callous about the situation, but rather experienced great

conflict. They felt enormous pressures from the situation and the

experimenter to continue. But they were also concerned about the welfare of

the victim and about their personal responsibility for inflicting pain. As long

as subjects could shift responsibility to the experimenter and minimize their

own minds the pain the victim was enduring, obedience was so high. To the

extent that they felt personally responsible and were aware of the victim’s

pain, they were less obedient.

No one anticipated the levels of obedience that Milgram observed. To

demonstrate this point, he described his procedures in detail to psychiatrists,

college students, and middle-class adults. Virtually everyone predicted that

subjects would quickly stop giving shocks once the learner protested. The

psychiatrists predicted that most subjects would not go beyond 150 volts

when the victim first demanded to be let go, and that only one subject in a

thousand would administer the highest level of shock on the board. One

contribution of this research was to show that even experts could not

accurately predict what subjects would actually do in the powerful situation

created in Milgram’s laboratory.

Milgram interpreted his findings as showing that “normal” people can

be led to perform destructive acts when exposed to strong situational

pressure from a legitimate authority: “Men who are in everyday life

responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority... and by

the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation

into performing harsh acts.” Miller (1986) has called this the “normality

thesis” – the idea that evil acts are not necessarily performed by abnormal or

“crazy” people. Rather, average individuals who see themselves as mere

agents in an organization, carrying out the orders of those in command, can

behave in destructive ways. The Milgram studies are a compelling reminder

of the power of social situations to influence human behaviour.

Although the pressures to obey legitimate authorities are strong,

individuals do not inevitably obey. For example, on helping behaviour, we

describe the actions of the Christians who risked their lives to shelter Jews

from Nazi prosecution. What enabled these individuals to resist Nazi policies

and more generally, how can we account for principled resistance to

authority?

Several factors seem to make a difference. First, obedience is reduced

when the suffering of the victims is highly salient. Second, obedience is

reduced when an individual is made to feel personally responsible for his or

her actions. Third, people are more likely to resist authority when others in

the situation model disobedience. Fourth, encouraging individuals to

question the motives, expertise, or judgment of authorities can also reduce

obedience.

The Ethics of Obedience Research

Disadvantages

Finally, this discussion of the Milgram studies should not end without

noting that Milgram’s research sparked an unprecedented debate about the

ethics of psychological research. Diana Baumrind (1964) severely criticized

Milgram for exposing participants to psychological distress, embarrassment,

and loss of dignity. She suggested that Milgram did not take seriously

enough how subjects reacted to his study, and she questioned whether the

debriefing following the experiment was able to restore the subjects’

psychological well-being. She worried that in the long run, those who

participated in Milgram’s research may have suffered a loss of self-esteem

and that the deception used in the study may have reduced participants’

trust in authorities.

Advantages

Milgram (1964) offered a strong defense of his research. He

emphasized that the study was not ultimately harmful to subjects. He

explained the detailed and thoughtful nature of the explanations given to

participants at the end of the experimental session. He also noted that a

one-year follow-up of participants found no evidence of long-term

psychological harm. Indeed, most subjects expressed positive feelings about

the research. Milgram also emphasized the value of his research. Neither he

nor his colleagues had expected the high levels of obedience they found, and

so important new information about human behaviour was provided.

Psychological science has weathered the storm created by the Milgram

controversy and has learned a good deal in the process. Today,

psychologists are much more aware of the potential risks of psychological

research. In addition, the U.S. government has established strict guidelines

for the protection of human research participants. An important part of

current procedures is that research projects must be evaluated in advance

by a panel of experts, so that an individual researcher can no longer decide

that a study is ethically sound. It is doubtful that the Milgram studies made

them ethically justifiable.

Reflection

Alvanrhyl P. Ampo BMLS-2H

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the

demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe.”

-Stanley Milgram

Every day we hear commands such as “Wash the dishes!”, “Help with

the Group report!” and etc. but what makes us obey or disobey this orders?

In the context of prisoner brutality during wars, what makes a soldier follow a

commander’s order to torture the prisoners of war? Does the statement “I

just follow the order of my superior” a justifiable reason?

With regards to the questions on the preceding paragraph, which is

about obedience to authority, a well-known psychologist and professor of

Yale University, in the name of Stanley Milgram attempted to answer our

inquiry by his experiment. The experiment was also done in attempt to

account with the holocaust. Moreover, the experiment also extended the

line of study of the preceding researchers in an effort to understand how a

civilized country such as Germany fell under the influence of a ruthless

dictator like Hitler. Milgram’s experiments have shown itself to be fruitful,

fruitful enough to gain praise and ethical issues that indeed made it famous

and controversial.

While I was reading how the experiment performed, my first

impression to the method was it is somewhat cruel for it evolves shocking

the “learner”. However, as I was contemplating the totality of the procedure,

I noticed that the unethical part in the experiment is the deception of the

participants and the convincing of participants by the experimenter to

continue even if they were reluctant. In the issue of psychological stress and

discomfort on the participant, follow-up on participants have found no

evidence of long-term psychological harm. In my own point of view, the

method of research was acceptable because it proved to be free of long-term

psychological harm although the participants were noticeably trembling and

reluctant. I also think that the deception of participants is an essential part of

the experiment in order to get the genuine reaction of the participants.

On the brighter side of the experiment, it showed a significant findings

which can be equated to Sigmund Freud’s work. The data procured was

contrary with what was expected. Even I predicted a large percentage of

disobedience but as I read the discussion of results, it brought me

amazement. The experiment indeed revolutionized the way of thinking on

human obedience to authority. Variations of the experiment also tell us how

the distance of the “experimenter” and the “learner” to the “teacher”, and

the influence of “other teachers” affect the obedience of the “teacher”.

In conclusion, Milgram’s experiments may have been tarnished with

ethical issues but, it emerged to be victorious and have been a

revolutionizing fact that changed the understanding of human psyche, in the

context obedience to authority.

References

Franzoi, Stephen L. (2000, 1996). Social Psychology (Second Edition). United

States of America, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Pages 297-298

Levin, Irwin P., Ainrichs, James V. (1995). Experimental Psychology,

Contemporary Methods and Applications. United States of America, WM.C.

Brown Communications, Inc. Pages 278-279, 282

Taylor, Shelley E., Peplau, Letitia Anne, Et. al (2000). Social Psychology

(Tenth Edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, United States of America,

Prentice-Hall , Inc. Pages 224-227

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram

http://www.experiment-resources.com/milgram-experiment-ethics.html

http://www.stanleymilgram.com/pdf/roots.pdf