The Milgram Experiment And The Perils Of Obedience
How far will you go to obey an order?
Do we know how to recognize when our obedience to authority is the result of a conscious choice or manipulation?
In the 1960s, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram tried to answer this question with a controversial experiment.
The Milgram experiment is a social psychology experiment conducted for the first time in 1961 by the psychologist from whom it takes its name. The aim of the experiment was to study the behavior of individuals who receive orders that conflict with their values.
After the initial controversy and the uproar caused by the experiment, other researchers proposed it again in different ways, but without changing its substance. The last time was in 2011.
Unfortunately, the outcome of subsequent versions did not differ from that of the original experiment. This is why the results of the Milgram experiment must concern us today as in 1961.
Milgram Experiment — The Preparation
The sample included men between the ages of 20 and 50 from various social backgrounds. As a reward, they were asked to collaborate on a scientific experiment on memory and the effects of learning.
In the first part of the test the experimenter, with an accomplice collaborator, assigns the roles of “student” and “teacher” through a rigged draw. The unsuspecting subject is in fact always drawn as a teacher, while the accomplice is a student.
The scientist then separates the two subjects and leads them to two different rooms. He then has the teacher stand in front of the control panel of an electric power generator. The generator has 30 toggle switches associated with increasing electrical voltage levels — from mild to potentially deadly.
The scientist makes the teacher try the shock of the third level (45 V) so that he can understand the pain associated with this discharge and convince himself that it is all true.
Milgram experiment — The Execution
The scientist asks the unsuspecting teacher to ask a series of questions to the student. The scientist then orders the teacher to administer an electric shock to the student every time the student gives a wrong answer… The teacher will have to increase the intensity of the shock after each student’s wrong answer.
The student is tied to some sort of electric chair connected to the power generator in the next room. He has to answer questions and pretend to feel pain as the intensity of the shocks progresses (which he doesn’t actually get). The student actor must then shout and beg the teacher to stop until the 330 V discharge is reached. Once the 330 V discharge is reached, the student will no longer make any moans and will pretend to have fainted…
During the experiment, the researcher (“ authority figure “) urges the teacher to continue to administer increasing electric shocks to each student’s wrong response. The researcher measures each subject’s level of obedience by the number of the last switch pressed before rebelling and refusing to administer further shocks.
Only at the end of the experiment, the researcher informs the subjects that the victim has not suffered any kind of shock.
Manipulation and obedience to authority — The results of the experiment
The results of the experiment went against the expectations of Milgram himself and aroused bewilderment in the scientific world and in the society of the time.
Many of the subjects enrolled, while showing signs of tension and unease, obeyed the researcher without contradicting him. Numerous subjects administered escalating electric shocks, even as the student screamed in pain and begged them to stop. These people reported that they only followed orders and did not feel responsible for their actions.
Milgram then showed how an authority figure, who at a given time and context is considered legitimate, can lead different individuals to a level of obedience that leads them to ignore their own ethics. Faced with this type of authority, subjects no longer feel free to decide independently and consider themselves simple executors.
Obedience is something we’ve been taught to
We’ve been taught to obey from an early age to such an extent that some of us may come to think that our values are less important than respecting established rules and conventions.
Many of the subjects enrolled for the experiment confirmed that they do not feel morally responsible for their actions, as executors of others’ orders.
This “ state of de-responsibility “ seems to be triggered by three factors in particular:
- presence of an authority perceived as legitimate.
- adherence to a system of shared and consolidated rules and habits.
- social pressure: disobeying the authoritarian figure means questioning his power, losing his approval, and the resulting advantages.
When an individual accepts the pattern of behavior proposed by an authority, he comes to redefine a destructive action and perceives it as reasonable, if not even necessary.
Obedience and deresponsibilization
« They told me to do it », « I respected the rules », « It was he who asked me », « It’s the orders, it’s not my fault … », « I was educated like this … ».
What do these sentences have in common? Perhaps the “lightheartedness” and lightness of the lack of responsibility.
Again, language reveals our deepest beliefs and how we face life’s trials. Hence also the price we are willing to pay for using our personal power under any circumstances, refusing to be at the mercy of the environment. That power that no one can take away from us if we don’t allow it.
The one who takes responsibility takes on something that others didn’t want to take on directly. Whether for better or for worse. It is the difference between a child and an adult: the child entrusts themselves to others, letting them decide for them. The adult decides for themselves and for all the “children” who submit to their will and power.
Manipulation and obedience — Τhe right distance
However, Milgram noted that the degree of obedience to authority varied with the distance between teacher and student.
In fact, Milgram tested four different levels of distance. In the first level, the teacher could neither see nor hear the student’s moans. In the second level, the teacher could listen but not observe the student. At the third level, the teacher could both listen and observe the student. Finally in the fourth level, to inflict the punishment, the teacher had to grab the student’s arm and push it onto a plate.
At the first distance level, 65% of the subjects continued the experiment until the strongest shock, ιn the second level, the percentage dropped to 62.5%, in the third level to 40%, while in the fourth level it reached 30%.
The detachment and the perception of the pain of the other
This last result reveals how our willingness to inflict pain on another individual progressively decreases in the face of greater contact and closeness with the latter.
Physical and emotional detachment allows us not to perceive the pain of the other. If we do not see and hear our victim’s moans, we are more likely to continue taking actions that inflict pain on them.
So let’s think about our daily life and the different situations in which, although we are aware that some of our behaviors can cause suffering to others, we continue to put them into action.
In these cases, our obedience is expressed not only towards authoritarian figures with whom we interact but also towards the system of social conventions and values in which we are immersed every day.
Consider, for example, the consumption of meat: most of us are aware of the pain inflicted on animals in intensive farming and of the environmental and health damage that derives from it. Yet the fact that mass culture continues to approve of this eating style as well as the “distance” between us and the victims when pain is inflicted on them, allows us to live in peace. Many of us are so calm as to ridicule those minorities who question these choices and ask deeper and “uncomfortable” questions.
Social efficiency through manipulation and obedience
We can therefore understand how the massive introduction of new rules and styles of behavior is simpler and faster if we are already used to spontaneously adhering to habits shared by the group.
The standardization and absence of critical thinking are essential elements of social control. In this case, ethics and personal ideas must take second place with respect to the sharing of collective values and behaviors.
Some might argue that nature is also not “good” and follows group behaviors that have nothing to do with ethics. However, when it comes to nature, and in particular the animal world, the efficiency of such behaviors remains undeniable.
In fact, in nature, even the apparently cruelest acts aim at the survival of the species. It is therefore normal for a lion to attack and kill an antelope cub in front of its mother and start tearing it from the lower limbs. This allows the heart of the prey to continue beating, keeping it alive and preserving the freshness of the meat it will have to eat for longer. Nature is neither good nor bad, it is simply efficient.
But what efficiency is present in the intensive breeding of animals and in the consequent damage to the environment and to the health of all of us, as well as in many other behaviors that we implement every day on a large scale? How do they help make our lifestyle efficient and prolong the survival of our species?
The past is present
Almost 60 years later, the Milgram experiment is still capable of unsettling and disorienting us. The fact that it has confirmed the same results even in recent times does not help those looking for reassurance on the intrinsic goodness of the human being. As a warning, beyond time and space, it asks us who we are and what we could become.
In Milgram's experiment, the uncertain boundary between good and evil is lost in the slippery folds of obedience and respect for the rules.
That thin line asks us what we are willing to lose and to what extent why we move into rooms full of switches every day. And today, like 60 years ago, it continues asking us how many and which switches we are ready to push before stopping.
References
- Baker, Peter K. “The Electric Lock: Did Stanley Milgram’s Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?” Pacific Standard (2013, September 10). https://psmag.com/social-justice/electric-schlock-65377
- Burger, Jerry M. “Copying Milgram: Will People Obey Today?”. American Psychologist 64.1 (2009): 1–11. http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2008-19206-001
- Hollander, Matthew. “Becoming a Hero: Insights from the Milgram Experiment”. HuffPost Contributors Network (2015, April 29). https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-to-be-a-hero-insight-_b_6566882
- Jarrett, Christian. “New analysis shows that the majority of Milgram participants realized that ‘obedience experiments’ are not really dangerous.” The British Psychological Society: Research Digest (2017, December 12). https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-followership/
- Romm, Kari. “Rethinking one of psychology’s most infamous experiments”. The Atlantic (2015, January 28). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/
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