The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,^[0] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.^[2]

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"^[3]

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.^[4]

The experiment

The role of the experimentor was played by a stern, impassive biology teacher dressed in a technician's coat, and the victim was played by an Irish-American accountant trained to act for the role. The participant and the victim (supposedly another volunteer, but in reality a of the experimentor) were told by the experimentor that they would be participating in an experiment helping his study of memory and learning in different situations.^[0]

Two slips of paper were then presented to the participant and to the actor. The participant was led to believe that one of the slips said "learner" and the other said "teacher," and that he and the actor had been given the slips randomly. In fact, both slips said "teacher," but the actor claimed to have the slip that read "learner," thus guaranteeing that the participant was always the "teacher." At this point, the "teacher" and "learner" were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.^[0]

The "teacher" was given a 45-volt electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing for each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.^[0]

The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electro-shock generator, which played pre-recorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.^[0]

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.^[0]

If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimentor, in this order:^[0]

1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires that you continue.
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.
4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession. This experiment could be seen to raise some ethical issues as the experimentor did not truthfully tell the people involved what the real test was for.

Results

Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology majors as to what they thought would be the results. All of the poll respondents believed that only a sadistic few (average 1.2%) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues and found that they, too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock.^[0]

In Milgram's first set of experiments, 65 percent (26 of 40)^[0] of experiment participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment, some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. No participant steadfastly refused to administer shocks before the 300-volt level.^[0]

Later, Prof. Milgram and other psychologists performed variations of the experiment throughout the world, with similar results.^[5] Moreover, Milgram later investigated the effect of the experiment's locale on obedience levels, (e.g. one experiment was held in a respectable university, the other in an unregistered, backstreet office in a bustling city; the greater the locale's respectability, the greater the obedience rate). Apart from confirming the original results, the variations have tested variables in the experimental setup.

Dr. Thomas Blass of the University of Maryland Baltimore County performed a meta-analysis on the results of repeated performances of the experiment. He found that the percentage of participants who are prepared to inflict fatal voltages remains remarkably constant, 61–66 percent, regardless of time or place.^[6][7]

There is a little-known to the Milgram Experiment, reported by Philip Zimbardo: None of the participants who refused to administer the final shocks insisted that the experiment itself be terminated, nor left the room to check the health of the victim without requesting permission to leave, per Milgram's notes and recollections, when Zimbardo asked him about that point.

Milgram created a documentary film titled Obedience showing the experiment and its results. He also produced a series of five social psychology films, some of which dealt with his experiments.^[8]

The Milgram Experiment raised questions about the ethics of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants. In Milgram's defense, 84 percent of former participants surveyed later said they were "glad" or "very glad" to have participated, 15 percent chose neutral responses (92% of all former participants responding).^[9] Many later wrote expressing thanks. Milgram repeatedly received offers of assistance and requests to join his staff from former participants. Six years later (at the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress:

While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority . . . . To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself . . . . I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience . . . .

Yet, not every participant experienced the life-changing experience reported by some. By modern standards, participants were not fully debriefed, and exit interviews indicated many participants never fully understood the experiment's nature.

The experiments provoked emotional criticism more about the experiment's implications than with experimental ethics. In the journal Jewish Currents, Joseph Dimow, a participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale University, wrote about his early withdrawal as a "teacher", suspicious "that the whole experiment was designed to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period".^[10] Indeed, that was one of the explicitly-stated goals of the experiments. Quoting from the preface of Milgram's book, Obedience to Authority: "The question arises as to whether there is any connection between what we have studied in the laboratory and the forms of obedience we so deplored in the Nazi epoch".

In 1981, Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote that The Milgram Experiment and the later Zimbardo Experiment at Stanford University were frightening in their implications about the danger lurking in human nature's dark side.^[11]

Interpretations

Professor Milgram elaborated two theories explaining his results:

• The first is the theory of conformism, based on Solomon Asch's work, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person. A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person's behavioural model.
• The second is the agentic state theory, wherein, per Milgram, the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow. This is the foundation of military respect for authority: soldiers will follow, obey, and execute orders and commands from superiors, understanding that responsibility for their actions rests with the commanding superior officers.

Variations

In Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Milgram describes nineteen variations of his experiment. Generally, when the victim's physical immediacy was increased, the participant's compliance decreased; when the authority's physical immediacy increased, the participant's compliance increased (Experiments 1–4). For example, in Experiment 2, where participants received telephonic instructions from the experimenter, compliance decreased to 21 percent; interestingly, some participants deceived the experimenter by pretending to continue the experiment. In the variation where the "learner's" physical immediacy was closest, wherein participants had to physically hold the "learner's" arm onto a shock plate, compliance decreased. Under that condition, 30 percent of participants completed the experiment.

In Experiment 8, women were the participants; previously, all participants had been men. Obedience did not significantly differ, though the women communicated experiencing higher levels of stress.

Experiment 10 took place in a modest office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, purporting to be the commercial entity "Research Associates of Bridgeport" without apparent connection to Yale University, to eliminate the university's prestige as a factor influencing the participants' behaviour. In those conditions, obedience dropped to 47.5 percent.

Milgram also combined the power of authority with that of conformity. In those experiments, the participant was joined by one or two additional "teachers" (also actors, like the "learner"). The behavior of the participants' peers strongly affected the results. In Experiment 17, when two, additional teachers refused to comply, only 4 of 40 participants continued in the experiment. In Experiment 18, the participant performed a subsidiary task (reading the questions via microphone or recording the learner's answers) with another "teacher" who complied fully. In that variation, only 3 of 40 defied the experimenter.^[12]

Recent variations on Milgram's experiment suggest an interpretation requiring neither obedience nor authority, but suggest that participants suffer learned helplessness, where they feel powerless to control the outcome, and so abdicate their personal responsibility. In a recent experiment using a computer simulation in place of the learner receiving electrical shocks, the participants administering the shocks were aware that the learner was unreal, but still showed the same results.^[13]

In the Primetime series Basic Instincts, the Milgram Experiment was repeated in 2006, with the same results with the men; the second experiment, with women, showed they were more likely to continue the experiment. A third experiment, with an additional teacher for peer pressure, showed peer pressure is less likely to stop a participant.^[14]

Real life examples

From April 1995 until June 30 2004, there was a series of hoaxes, known as the Strip Search Prank Call Scam, upon fast food workers in popular fast food chains in America in which a phone caller, claiming to be a police officer, persuaded authority figures to strip and sexually abuse workers. The perpetrator achieved a high level of success in persuading workers to perform acts which they would not have done under normal circumstances.^[15] (The chief suspect, David R. Stewart, was found not guilty in the only case that has gone to trial so far.^[16])

Media depictions

The Human Behavior Experiments (2006) is a documentary by Alex Gibney, about Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo and the implications of their researches.^[17]

The Milgram Experiment itself has been depicted internationally in television and film.

• The Tenth Level, (1975) was a CBS television film about the experiment, featuring William Shatner, Ossie Davis, and John Travolta.^[18][19]
• Atrocity (2005), is a film re-enactment of the Milgram Experiment.^[20]
• Obedience is a black-and-white film of the experiment, shot by Milgram. Distributed by The Pennsylvania State University Media Services.
• The Milgram Re-enactment, 2002. Color, Exact re-enactment of one condition of the obedience experiment. Created by conceptual UK artist Rod Dickinson.

In addition, the experiment has featured notably in other projects.

(2005), a documentary film by Alex Gibney, refers to the Milgram Experiment as the rationale for the actions of Enron's line-level employees. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary.^[21] The Documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, directed by Rory Kennedy, uses actual films clips from the Milgram Experiment.^[22] The documentary won an Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special.^[23] Derren Brown recreated this experiment in his television special The Heist.

See also

• Stanford prison experiment
• Asch conformity experiments
• Little Eichmanns
• My Lai Massacre
• Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

Footnotes

References

External links

• Stanley Milgram Redux, TBIYTB - description of a recent iteration of Milgram's experiment at Yale University, published in "The Yale Hippolytic," Jan. 22, 2007.
• Behavioral Study of Obedience - Milgram's journal article describing the experiment in, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963, Vol. 67, No. 4, 371-378
• Synthesis of book A faithful synthesis of "Obedience to Authority" – Stanley Milgram
• A personal account of a participant in the Milgram obedience experiments
• Summary and evaluation of the 1963 obedience experiment
• The Science of Evil from ABC News Primetime
• When Good People Do Evil Article in the Yale Alumni Magazine by Philip Zimbardo on the 45th anniversary of the Milgram experiment.
• Obedience - Original footage of the milgram experiment on Google Video.