Milgram experiment
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The experimenter (E) orders the participant (S) to give what the participant believes are painful electric shocks to another participant (A), who is actually an actor. Many participants continued to give shocks despite pleas for mercy from the actor, as long as the experimenter kept on ordering them to do so. |
The
Milgram experiment (
Obedience to Authority Study) was a
famous scientific experiment of
social psychology. The
experiment was first described by
Stanley Milgram, a
psychologist at
Yale University, in an article titled
Behavioral Study of Obedience. The article was published in the
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963 and later discussed at book length in his 1974
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. It was intended to measure the willingness of a participant to
obey an
authority who instructs the participant to do something that may conflict with the participant's personal
conscience.
The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of
Adolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in
the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" (Milgram, 1974)
Milgram summed up in the article "The Perils of Obedience" (Milgram, 1974), writing:
"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, 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."Subjects were recruited for the Yale study through newspaper ads and direct mail. The experiments occurred in two rooms in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall on the university's Old Campus. The experiment was advertised as lasting one hour, for which the respondents would be paid $4.50 ($18.70 adjusted for inflation
in 2006). The participants were men between the ages of 20 and 50, from all educational backgrounds, ranging from an elementary school dropout to participants with doctoral degrees.
The participant and a confederate of the experimenter, who was an actor pretending to be another participant, were told by the experimenter that they would be participating in an experiment to test the effects of
punishment on learning.
A slip of paper was then given to the participant and another to the confederate. The participant was led to believe that one of the slips said "learner" and the other said "teacher," and that the participants 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.
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 4 possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the learner would receive a shock, with the voltage increasing with each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.
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, the learner gave no further responses to questions and no further complaints.
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.
If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:
#Please continue.#The experiment requires you to continue, please go on.#It is essential that you continue.#You have no choice, you must continue.
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.
Milgram created a documentary film showing the experiment and its results, titled
Obedience, legitimate copies of which are hard to find today. He then produced a series of five other films on social psychology with
Harry From, some of which touched on his experiments [
1]. They may all be obtained from
Penn State Media Services.
Before the experiment was conducted Milgram polled fellow psychologists as to what the results would be. They unanimously believed that only a sadistic few (0.1%), would be prepared to give the maximum voltage.
In Milgram's first set of experiments, 67.5 percent (27 out of 40) of experimental participants administered the experiment's final 450-volt shock, though many were quite uncomfortable in doing so; everyone paused at some point and questioned the experiment, some even saying they would return the check for the money they were paid. No participant steadfastly refused to give further shocks before the 300-volt level. Variants of the experiment were later performed by Milgram himself and other psychologists around the world with similar results. 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 (who is also the author of a biography of Milgram, called
The Man who Shocked the World) 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, between 61% and 66%, regardless of time or location (a popular account of Blass' results was published in
Psychology Today, March/April 2002). The full results were published in the
Journal of Applied Social Psychology (Blass, 1999).
There is a little-known
coda to the 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 that the victim was well without asking for permission to leave, according to Milgram's notes and recollections when he was asked on this point by Zimbardo.
The experiment provoked a "kill the messenger" response among researchers. It raised questions about the
ethics of scientific experimentation itself because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants (even though it could be said that this stress was brought on by their own free actions). Most modern scientists would consider the experiment unethical today, though it resulted in valuable insights into human psychology.
In Milgram's defense, 84 percent of former participants surveyed later said they were "glad" or "very glad" to have participated and 15 percent chose neutral (92% of all former participants responding). Many later wrote expressing thanks. Milgram repeatedly received offers of assistance and requests to join his staff from former participants. Six years later (during the height of the
Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was "glad" to have been involved despite the apparent levels of stress:
"While I was a subject [participant] 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..."However, not everyone went through the life-changing experience reported by some former participants. Participants were not fully debriefed by modern standards, and exit interviews appeared to indicate that many seemed to never fully understand the nature of the experiment.
The experiments also raised criticism of a more emotional nature, which have more to do with the implications of the experiments than the ethicality of the setup. A participant in the 1961 experiment at Yale writes in
Jewish Currents 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". This was indeed 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."Milgram describes 19 variations of the experiment that he conducted in
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. In general, he found that when the immediacy of the victim was increased, compliance decreased, and when immediacy of the authority increased, compliance increased (Experiments 1â€"4). For instance, in one variation where participants received instructions from the experimenter only by telephone (Experiment 2), compliance decreased to 21 percent; interestingly, a number of participants deceived the experimenter by
pretending to continue the experiment. In the variation where immediacy of the "learner" was closest, participants had to physically hold the learner's arm onto a shock plate, which decreased compliance. In this latter condition, 30 percent completed the experiment.
In Experiment 8, women were used as participants (all of Milgram's other experiments used only men). Obedience did not differ significantly, though they indicated experiencing higher levels of stress.
In one version (Experiment 10), Milgram rented a modest office in
Bridgeport,
Connecticut, purporting to be run by a commercial entity called "Research Associates of Bridgeport" with no apparent connection to Yale, in order to eliminate the prestige of the university as a possible factor influencing participants' behavior. The results of this experiment did not greatly differ from those conducted at the Yale campus.
Milgram also combined the power of authority with that of
conformity. In these experiments, the participant was joined by one or two additional "teachers" (who were actually actors, like the "learner"). The behavior of the participants' apparent peers strongly affected results. When two additional teachers refused to comply (Experiment 17), only four participants of 40 continued the experiment. In another version (Experiment 18), the participant performed a subsidiary task (such as reading the questions over the microphone or recording the learner's answers) with another "teacher" who complied fully. In this variation, only three of 40 defied the experimenter. [
2]
Variations on the Milgram experiment have pervaded the popular culture through film, TV and music. A partial list, arranged in chronological order of release:
The Tenth Level, was a 1975 TV dramatization of the experiment. Starring in the film were
William Shatner,
Ossie Davis, and
John Travolta.
I comme Icare (English title:
I as in Icarus), a 1979 movie by
Henri Verneuil starring
Yves Montand, contains a key scene where Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority is thoroughly explained and shown. It may add up to some conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of
John F. Kennedy, since the plot of this film is largely an obvious subtext to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers.
*"Just A Job To Do" is a song recorded by
Genesis on their 1983 album "
Genesis". Guitarist/writer
Mike Rutherford once stated that the lyrics were inspired by Milgram's experiment.
*The graphic novel
V for Vendetta (published from 1982 to 1985) refers to the Milgram experiment on page 73 of the first volume, and compares it to experiments performed on V and other human characters in the novel.
Ghostbusters, a blockbuster 1984 movie written by
Harold Ramis and
Dan Aykroyd, contains a scene introducing
Bill Murray's character to the audience as a sly professor administering electrical shocks to a hapless college student while flirting with an attractive
co-ed. In the commentary track of the DVD release of the film, Harold Ramis says that this parody was inspired by the Milgram Experiment.
*"We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)" is a
Peter Gabriel song found on his 1986 album
So. The title refers to the 37 out of 40 participants who showed complete obedience in Experiment 18.
*In the 90th episode of
Malcolm in the Middle broadcast on November 30, 2003 (Production Code: 06-03-505), Malcolm reveals humiliating secrets about his brother Reese for a school assignment by secretly videotaping conversations with him. His teacher Mr. Hercobie quotes the Milgram experiment after Malcolm has shown the video to his class.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, an
Oscar-nominated documentary film directed by
Alex Gibney and released in 2005, refers to the Milgram experiment as a rationale for the actions of Enron's line-level employees.
*
Alex Gibney also directed a documentary on
Stanley Milgram,
Phillip Zimbardo and the implications of their research, called
The Human Behaviour Experiments. It was released in 2006.
*In
The Heist, a television show broadcast in the
United Kingdom in 2006, Derren Brown uses the experiment to select which participants will proceed to the next stage of being persuaded to perform an "armed robbery".
*
Asch conformity experiments*
Stanford prison experiment*
Mind control*
Depersonalization*
Point of no return*
Diffusion of responsibility* Blass, Thomas. "The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority",
Journal of Applied Social Psychology [
3], 1999, 25, pp. 955-978.
* Blass, Thomas. (2002), "The Man Who Shocked the World",
Psychology Today,
35:(2), Mar/Apr 2002.
* Blass, Thomas. (2004),
The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram. Basic Books (ISBN 0738203998).
* Levine, Robert V. "Milgram's Progress" [
4].
American Scientist.
**Book review of
"The Man Who Shocked the World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram". Thomas Blass. xxiv + 360 pp. Basic Books, 2004.
* Milgram, Stanley. Official website [5]
* Milgram, Stanley. (1963). "Behavioral Study of Obedience".[6] Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
67, 371-378.
* Milgram, Stanley. (1974), Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View
. Harpercollins (ISBN 006131983X).
* Milgram, Stanley. (1974), "The Perils of Obedience" [7]. Harper's Magazine
** Abridged and adapted from Obedience to Authority
.
* Miller, Arthur G., (1986). "The obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science". New York : Praeger.
* Parker, Ian, "Obedience". Granta'' [
8] Issue 71, Autumn 2000.
** Includes an interview with one of Milgram's volunteers, and discusses modern interest in, and scepticism about, the experiment.
* Tarnow, Eugen, "Towards the Zero Accident Goal: Assisting the First Officer Monitor and Challenge Captain Errors" [
9].
* Wu, William, "Practical Psychology: Compliance: The Milgram Experiment." [
10].
Film
*
Obedience, Black-and-white film of the experiment, shot by Milgram. Distributed by
The Pennsylvania State University Media Sales
*
The Milgram Reenactment, 2002. Color, Exact re-enactment of one condition of the obedience experiment. Created by conceptual UK artist Rod Dickinson.
*also see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/ , a German movie that is based on the 1971 "Stanford Prison Experiment"
*
synthesis of book A faithful synthesis of "Obedience to Authority" â€" Stanley Milgram
*
A personal account of a participant in the Milgram obedience experiments*
Summary and evaluation of the 1963 obedience experiment
