Researcher: Stanley Milgram (1963) [updated 3 February 2012]

AIMS: In the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Nuremberg Trials, many psychologists and sociologists were fascinated with explaining how such an advanced and civilised people as the Germans - including men who were faithful husbands, good fathers and otherwise law-abiding citizens - could have indulged systematically in such barbarism and cruelty. The defence of many Nazis and concentration camp guards that they were ‘just following orders’ reached its apogee in the notorious 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the so-called ‘architect of the Holocaust’ who had been commended for the efficiency of the death camp under his command at Auschwitz. Many of a dispositional view argued that, so despicable were the atrocities, there must be something inherently evil in the German nature - a sort of national character defect.

However, political theorist Hannah Arendt (1963), covering the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker, coined the phrase, ‘the banality of evil’, writing: “It would have been comforting indeed to believe that Eichmann was a monster... The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

Stanley Milgram was of a situationalist viewpoint He thought it possible most people could do serious injury to others if ordered to by the ‘right’ authority in the ‘right’ context. He aimed to test the hypothesis, “Germans are different”, by investigating how the situational context could lead ordinary people to show obedience to authority and inflict harm on others.

PROCEDURE (METHOD): 40 adult male volunteers aged between 20 and 50 (a self-selected sample answering a newspaper advert or direct mail) were paid $4.00 (plus 50c carfare) to take part in a study of

‘memory and learning’.

• “You have no other choice - you must go on”

If the teachers asserted that the learner clearly did not want to continue, the experimenter would respond: “Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on.”  If the teacher still refused to go on, then that trial of the experiment was ended.

The participants did not know until the end of the experiment - when they were reintroduced to ‘Mr Wallace’ - that the learner responses were tape recorded and no shocks were actually administered.

Milgram ensured that all participants were fully debriefed and given some assurance that their behaviour in the experiment was normal - whether they had refused to continue or gone on to the full 450v - and that other participants had behaved similarly.

FINDINGS (RESULTS): All participants gave shocks up to the 300-volt level, and 26 of the 40 men (65%) of participants continued to the highest level, 450 volts. 14 teachers stopped between 300v and 375v. (A table of detailed results is contained in Part 2.) These findings completely contradicted the predicted results that 3% or less would reach 450 volts. (Milgram had surveyed groups of people, including 40 professional psychologists and psychiatrists, 14 Psychology students and various middle-class adults -

.

Mr Wallace being wired up

The shock generator

[Photos copyright © 1974 Alexandra Milgram]

CONCLUSIONS: The research showed that obedience to authority is due more to situational factors than to ‘deviant’ personality. Milgram identified 13 (mostly situational) factors he believed contributed to the high levels of obedience:-

1. The location of the study at a prestigious university provided authority - as did Jack Williams’ lab coat.
2. Participants assumed the experimenter knew what he was doing, had a worthy purpose and so should be followed.
3. Participants assumed that the ‘learner’ had consented voluntarily to take part.
4. The participant didn’t wish to disrupt the experiment because he felt under obligation to the experimenter due to his voluntary consent to take part.
5. The sense of obligation was reinforced because the participant was being paid (although he was told he could leave).
6. Participants believed that the role of learner was determined by chance; therefore, the learner couldn’t really complain.
7. It was a novel situation for the participant who, therefore, didn’t know how to behave. If the teacher had been able to consult with others, he might have behaved differently.
8. Some participants assumed that the discomfort caused was minimal and temporary - and that the scientific gains were important. However, others were desperately aware that they almost certainly had seriously hurt the learner and may even have killed him.
9. As the learner ‘played the game’ up to 300v, some participants assumed the learner might be willing to continue with the experiment.
10. The participant was torn between the demands of the victim and those of the experimenter.
11. The 2 demands were not equally pressing and legitimate.
12. The participant had very little time to resolve the conflict at 300v and didn’t know the victim would remain silent for the rest of the experiment.
13. The conflict was between 2 deeply-ingrained tendencies - not to harm others and to obey those perceived to be legitimate authorities.

Milgram investigated a number of these and other factors in variations on the shock experiment over the following decade.

The findings from the Milgram’s shock experiment undermined substantially the “Germans are different” theory. (Milgram had originally intended the Yale experiment to be a pilot for actually conducting the study in Germany on

Germans; but the results, which Milgram himself was astounded at, rendered the proposed German expedition unnecessary.)

It also provides evidence for the concept of agency - that people are more willing to take orders - especially when experiencing moral strain (going against their own sense of right and wrong) - if the order-giver is understood to both a legitimate authority for giving the orders and taking  responsibility for the consequences of those orders.

Implications include the relevance of this research to the real-life atrocities of the Second World War and subsequent atrocities such as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam (1968) and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia (1995).

Milgram’s research demonstrates the need to identify ways of preventing people from showing misplaced obedience to authority.

A ‘teacher’ observes ‘Mr Wallace’ getting ready

A teacher is shown the paired-word task

most of whom thought the teachers would stop at the point (140v) the learner asked to be released.)   

Many participants asked who would take responsibility for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the researcher assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept this transfer of responsibility and continue shocking, even though many were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so.

There were marked effects on the naive participants’ behaviour, with most showing signs of extreme tension. For example, they trembled, sweated, stuttered, groaned, swore, wept, dug their fingernails into their flesh, and 3 had full-blown uncontrollable seizures. (One, a 46-year-old encyclopaedia salesman, had such a violently convulsive seizure, the experiment had to be stopped!) 14 of the 40 showed nervous laughter - though, when debriefed, they made it clear that they weren’t sadists and hadn’t found the experience funny. Many participants heaved a sigh of relief when it was over. Despite the considerable distress most of them experienced, with many of them arguing repeatedly with the experimenter, they felt they had no choice other than to obey orders.

Of those who refused to go on, some got angry and some simply got up from their chairs and indicated they wanted to leave the lab.

Excerpt from a TV documentary overview of Milgram’s  experiment featuring social psychologist Thomas Blass

They were New Haven locals (not in high school or college) - a mixture of postal clerks,high-school teachers, salesmen, engineers and labourers, with education ranging from one who had not finished elementary school to doctorates and other professional degrees. The investigation took place at Yale  University.

The participants were deceived into thinking it was a test of learning – the effect of punishment on memory. In a rigged draw, the naive participant was always assigned the role of  ‘teacher’ and a confederate, ‘Mr Wallace’, played the role of ‘learner’. Mr Wallace, a mild-mannered  47-year-old accountant, advised that he had had a heart complaint in the past but would participate nonetheless. The experimenter in his lab coat was 31-year-old ‘Jack Williams’. (‘Wallace’ and ‘Williams’ rehearsed for a fortnight before the first trial.)

Participants were shown the equipment - a shock generator with 30 switches and lights going from 15v to 450v with various descriptions about the shock levels (ranging from “slight shock” to “danger: severe shock” - the final two switches were labelled “XXX”) and a chair in the next room, with straps on it wired to the generator. The teacher was shown the learner being strapped into this so he was immobile and electrode paste applied “to avoid blisters and burns”. The teacher was given a sample shock of 45v from a battery wired into the generator. The teacher was assured that, although the higher voltage shocks would be painful, there would be no permanent tissue damage. Although they couldn’t see each other, teacher and learner could communicate by intercom.

A word association test was the learning task. The teacher was instructed to read a list of two word pairs - such as “blue/girl”, “fat/neck” - and the learner was supposed to memorise them. The teacher next read the first word of each word pair again and asked the learner to choose the correct second word from a choice of 4. The learner indicated his choice by pressing one of 4 switches in front of him which in turn lit up one of 4 numbered quadrants located above the shock generator.If the learner got the answer correct, then they would move on to the next word. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher was instructed by the researcher to deliver an electric shock to the learner. (Approximately 3/4 of the answers were scripted to be incorrect. The responses were, in fact, tape recorded to ensure standardisation for each participant and the electric shocks were fake - the only genuine shock administered was the teacher’s sample shock.)

The measure of obedience was the strength of the electric shock administered by the participants, with 15-volt increments

for each wrong answer. The teacher was required to announce the voltage level before administering the shock (to emphasise the severity of the shock). From 75v on the learner grunted; at 120v he started complaining of pain; at 150v he began complaining his heart was bothering him and demanded to be released - although he continued to answer questions; from 270v on he screamed with each shock; at 300v he pounded on the wall; at 315v he refused to answer any more questions and stopped responding; at 330v he screamed and, now hysterical, demanded to be let out; from 345v on he no longer responded. The teacher was then told to treat the absence of response as a wrong answer. When the max of 450 v was reached, the teacher was instructed to carry on and to administer the full 450v as the punishment for each unanswered question.

Teachers who protested at giving increasingly-dangerous shocks to someone who was clearly suffering were told they had to continue by the experimenter with the standardised prompts:-

• “Please continue” or “Please go on”
• “The experiment requires that you continue”
• “It is absolutely essential that you continue”