Stanley Milgram's Forced Obedience
The Original Newspaper AdStanley Milgram's Experiment
"Obedience and Individual Responsibility"
Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted a study focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience. He examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience" - - that they were just following orders of their superiors.
In the experiment, so-called "teachers" were recruited by Milgram. They were asked to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to a "learner" for each mistake he made during the experiment. The fictitious story given to these "teachers" was that the experiment was exploring effects of punishment (for incorrect responses) on learning behavior. The "teacher" was not aware that the "learner" in the study was actually an actor - - merely indicating discomfort as the "teacher" increased the electric shocks. When the "teacher" asked whether increased shocks should be given he/she was verbally encouraged to continue. Sixty percent of the "teachers" obeyed orders to punish the learner to the very end of the 450-volt scale (a visibly injurous voltage). No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts.
At times, the worried "teachers" questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept the response and continued the shock treatment, even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so. (According to videos, more than one �teacher� began to cry as they continued on.) The study raised many questions about how the subjects could bring themselves to administer such heavy shocks. More important to our interests are the ethical issues raised by such an experiment itself. What right does a researcher have to expose subjects to such stress? What activities should be and not be allowed in marketing research? Does the search for knowledge always justify such "costs" to subjects? Who should decide such issues?
Theory of Obedience
It is ironic that virtues of loyalty, discipline, and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational engines of war and bind men to malevolent systems of authority. The aftermath of the Holocaust and the events leading up to World War II, the world was stunned with the happenings in Nazi German and their acquired surrounding territories that came out during the Eichmann Trials. Eichmann, a high ranking official of the Nazi Party, was on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The questions is, "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 answered the call to this problem by performing a series of studies on obedience to authority. Typically, two individuals show up for a study and are taken to a room where one is strapped in a chair to prevent movement and an electrode is placed on his arm. Next, the other person who is called the "teacher" is taken to an adjoining room where he is instructed to read a list of two word pairs and ask the "learner" to read them back. If the "learner" gets the answer correct, then they move on to the next word. If the answer is incorrect, the "teacher" is supposed to shock the "learner" starting at 15 volts and going up to 450 volts, in 15 volt increments. The "teacher" automatically is supposed to increase the shock each time the "learner" misses a word in the list. Although the "teachers" thought that they were administering shocks to the "learners", the "learners" were actually confederates who were never actually harmed.
The theory that only those on the sadistic fringe of society would submit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings show that, "two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of �obedient' subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes". Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts. (Milgram, 1974)
According to Milgram, every human has the dual capacity to function as an individual exercising his or her own moral judgement and the capacity to make their own moral decisions based on their personal character. What is still a mystery is this, what happens to the average person who is obedient to authority when it overrides their own moral judgement?
Examples of Milgram's Theory
The following examples are the most extreme cases known in the 20th century, where obedience was used by authority figures to perform or subject immoral acts on other human beings. One example is the My Lai massacre which involved American soldiers in Vietnam. My Lai was a small village in Vietnam where American soldiers killed over 350 men, women, and children. It's important to note that this was the only documented incident during the Vietnam conflict that the American public were informed of. It was probably not an isolated incident.
Milgram argued that the following factors could help explain the situation at My Lai. Military training sets apart soldiers from all others to prevent competition with authorities outside the military. The purpose of basic training is to break down the concepts of individuals and expand on the group or unit. During this time the soldiers spend a lot of time being disciplined. Following orders is the basis for the soldiers' actions. Cultural differences set the two sides (U.S. and North Vietnam) further apart and race was used to depersonalize the actions of war. The soldiers involved with this massacre felt that they were just following orders and it was their duty to follow orders from their "authority" figure.
Milgram has noted reoccurring themes (as found in Obedience to Authority) in these specific incidents as well as others. People who are doing a job as instructed by an administrative figure are following the instructions of that administrative outlook and not the outlook of a moral code. The feelings of duty and personal emotion are clearly separated. Responsibility shifts in the mind of the subordinate from himself/herself to the authority figure. There is a well defined purpose behind the actions or goals of the authority, and the subordinate is depended upon to help and meet those goals. Milgram points out, "The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing. They raise the possibility that human nature, or -more specifically-the kind of character produced in American society, cannot be counted on to insulate the citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority."
Psychology undergraduates were asked what percentage of subjects would continue to give shocks up to the maximum of 450 volts. The mean percentage given was 1.2%. In fact, 26 out of the 40 subjects continued to 450 volts. Only 5 dropped out at 300 volts when the pounding on the wall was heard. A further four dropped out at 315 volts. On a 14 point scale, subjects indicated that the intensity of shock was 13.42 (mean), which was labelled 'extremely painful'.
Many subjects became extremely nervous. Evidence for this was sweating, trembling, stuttering, biting lips, groans, digging fingernails into their flesh. Fourteen subjects demonstrated nervous laughter. Three subjects had seizures. Further qualitative data reported by Milgram were the comments made by the subjects. In short, although many subjects administered shocks up to 450 volts, they experienced acute stress. It is interesting to draw a parallel with the Nazi execution squads, who were given extra rations of alcohol, presumably to counter the stress that their terrible acts produced within themselves.
Milgram's experiment breaks several of the ethical guidelines. Milgram deceives his subjects, by misinforming them about the true purpose of the experiment and by making them believe they are administering real electric shocks to a real subject. We would have to balance any criticisms with a consideration as to the necessity of deception. The main problem is one of demand characteristics, whereby if a subject knows the true purpose of an experiment, he might behave differently. It was good that Milgram stated at the start that the money paid to the subjects was theirs regardless of whether they continued with the experiment; However, during the experiment the prods used suggested that withdrawal was not possible for the subject. This is ethically incorrect. Even so, we should consider whether the experiment would have been valid if the experimenter kept reminding the subject about his right to withdraw. Many of the subjects were suffering from an enormous amount of stress, and this conflicts with the ethical principle of protecting the participant. Perhaps Milgram should have stopped the experiment as soon as the subject appeared to be suffering; but what sort of results could be recorded? Remember the perception of suffering is to some degree subjective, and therefore would not be a reliable indicator, if the voltage reached at abandonment of the experiment was to be used as the dependent variable. Some will argue that Milgram was not expecting the results that he did get, since many of his colleagues and students doubted whether many subjects would continue through to 450 volts. This is a weak argument, as this may explain why one or two subjects were allowed to suffer stress, but this does not explain why all forty subjects were allowed to suffer, or why Milgram repeated his experiment many times. In one of Milgram's subsequent experiments the subject was asked to force an arm of the struggling victim onto the electrodes!
Milgram's experiment was deliberately ethnocentric, as he was interested to see whether Americans would be as obedient as German subjects. The results obtained from the American sample meant it wasn't necessary to test the German sample, as the Americans were expected to refuse the orders of the experimenter. Other psychologists have tested subjects from many different cultures and found that generally people regardless of culture tend to obey people in authority.
Ethical considerations in Milgram are:
Consent - not informed. Participants volunteered for a learning experiment not one on obedience.
Deception - As to nature of experiment. Shocks not real. Victim not really a participant.
Asking colleagues - At first colleagues were asked and they said that the experiment would not cause any psychological problems. However, Milgram could have stopped at this point, but he went on to conduct numerous other trials.
Protection of participants - the participants displayed symptoms similar to that of a nervous breakdown.
Withdrawal from the investigation - physically yes the participants could, but with strong social pressure on them this was unlikely. The prods used, such as 'you have no alternative, you must go on' achieved this.
Observation - participants were filmed without their consent.
