KEY THEME

Stanley Milgram conducted a series of controversial studies on obedience, which is behavior performed in direct response to the orders of an authority.

KEY QUESTIONS

Stanley Milgram was one of the most creative and influential researchers that social psychology has known (Blass, 2004, 2009; A. G. Miller, 2009). He is best known for his experimental investigations of obedience. Obedience is the performance of a behavior in response to a direct command. Typically, an authority figure or a person of higher status, such as a teacher or supervisor, gives the command.

Milgram was intrigued by Asch’s discovery of how easily people could be swayed by group pressure. But Milgram wanted to investigate behavior that had greater personal significance than simply judging line lengths on a card (Milgram, 1963). Thus, Milgram posed what he saw as the most critical question: Could a person be pressured by others into committing an immoral act, some action that violated his or her own conscience, such as hurting a stranger? In his efforts to answer that question, Milgram embarked on one of the most systematic and controversial investigations in the history of psychology: to determine how and why people obey the destructive dictates of an authority figure (Blass, 2009; Russell, 2011).

Milgram was only 28 years old and a new faculty member at Yale University when he conducted his first obedience experiments. He recruited participants through direct-mail solicitations and ads in the local paper. Milgram’s subjects represented a wide range of occupational and educational backgrounds. Postal workers, high school teachers, white-collar workers, engineers, and laborers participated in the study.

Outwardly, it appeared that two subjects showed up at Yale University to participate in the psychology experiment, but the second subject was actually an accomplice working with Milgram. The role of the experimenter, complete with white lab coat, was played by a high school biology teacher. When both subjects arrived, the experimenter greeted them and gave them a plausible explanation of the study’s purpose: to examine the effects of punishment on learning.

Both subjects drew slips of paper to determine who would be the “teacher” and who the “learner.” However, the drawing was rigged so that the real subject was always the teacher and the accomplice was always the learner. The learner was actually a mild-mannered, 47-year-old accountant who had been carefully rehearsed for his part in the drama. Assigned to the role of the teacher, the real subject would be responsible for “punishing” the learner’s mistakes by administering electric shocks.

Immediately after the drawing, the teacher and learner were taken to another room, where the learner was strapped into an “electric chair.” The teacher was then taken to a different room, from which he could hear but not see the learner. Speaking into a microphone, the teacher tested the learner on a simple word-pair memory task. In the other room, the learner pressed one of four switches to indicate with which alternative the word had previously been paired. The learner’s response was registered in an answer box positioned on top of the “shock generator” in front of the teacher. Each time the learner answered incorrectly, the teacher was to deliver an electric shock.

Just in case there was any lingering doubt in the teacher’s mind about the legitimacy of the shock generator, the teacher was given a sample jolt using the switch marked 45 volts. In fact, this sample shock was the only real shock given during the course of the staged experiment.

The first time the learner answered incorrectly, the teacher was to deliver an electric shock at the 15-volt level. With each subsequent error, the teacher was told to progress to the next level on the shock generator. The teacher was also told to announce the voltage level to the learner before delivering the shock.

At predetermined voltage levels, the learner vocalized first his discomfort, then his pain, and, finally, agonized screams. Some of the learner’s vocalizations at the different voltage levels are shown in TABLE 12.3. After 330 volts, the learner’s script called for him to fall silent. If the teacher protested that he wished to stop or that he was worried about the learner’s safety, the experimenter would say, “The experiment requires that you continue” or “You have no other choice, you must continue.”

According to the script, the experiment would be halted when the teacher refused to obey the experimenter’s orders to continue. Alternatively, if the teacher obeyed the experimenter, the experiment would be halted once the teacher had progressed all the way to the maximum shock level of 450 volts.

Either way, after the experiment, the teacher was interviewed and it was explained that the learner had not actually received dangerous electric shocks. To underscore this point, a “friendly reconciliation” was arranged between the teacher and the learner, and the true purpose of the study was explained to the subject.

Can you predict how Milgram’s subjects behaved? Of the 40 subjects, how many obeyed the experimenter and went to the full 450-volt level? On a more personal level, how do you think you would have behaved had you been one of Milgram’s subjects?

Milgram himself asked psychiatrists, college students, and middle-class adults to predict how subjects would behave (see Milgram, 1974a). All three groups predicted that all of Milgram’s subjects would refuse to obey at some point. They predicted that most subjects would refuse at the 150-volt level, the point at which the learner first protested. They also believed that only a few rare individuals would go as far as the 300-volt level. Finally, none of those surveyed thought that any of Milgram’s subjects would go to the full 450 volts.

As it turned out, they were all wrong. Two-thirds of Milgram’s subjects—26 of the 40—were fully compliant and went to the full 450-volt level. And of those who defied the experimenter, not one stopped before the 300-volt level. TABLE 12.4 below shows the results of Milgram’s original obedience study.

Surprised? Milgram himself was stunned by the results, never expecting that the majority of subjects would administer the maximum voltage. Were his results a fluke? Did Milgram inadvertently assemble a sadistic group of New Haven residents who were all too willing to inflict extremely painful, even life-threatening, shocks on a complete stranger?

The answer to both these questions is no. Milgram’s obedience study has been repeated many times in the United States and other countries (see Blass, 2000, 2012). And, in fact, Milgram (1974a) replicated his own study on numerous occasions, using variations of his basic experimental procedure.

In one replication, for instance, Milgram’s subjects were 40 women. Were female subjects any less likely to inflict pain on a stranger? Not at all. The results were identical. Confirming Milgram’s results since then, eight other studies also found no sex differences in obedience to an authority figure (see Blass, 2000, 2004; Burger, 2009).

Perhaps Milgram’s subjects saw through his elaborate experimental hoax, as some critics have suggested (Orne & Holland, 1968). Was it possible that the subjects did not believe that they were really harming the learner? Again, the answer seems to be no. Milgram’s subjects seemed totally convinced that the situation was authentic. And they did not behave in a cold-blooded, unfeeling way. Far from it. As the experiment progressed, many subjects showed signs of extreme tension and conflict.

In describing the reaction of one subject, Milgram (1963) wrote, “I observed a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse.” Extreme reactions like this one have led people to question the ethics of Milgram’s experiment (Perry, 2013).

Milgram, along with other researchers, identified several aspects of the experimental situation that had a strong impact on the subjects (see Blass, 1992, 2000; Milgram, 1965). Here are some of the forces that influenced subjects to continue obeying the experimenter’s orders:

In a lengthy series of experiments, Milgram systematically varied the basic obedience paradigm. To give you some sense of the enormity of Milgram’s undertaking, approximately 1,000 subjects, each tested individually, experienced some variation of Milgram’s obedience experiment. Thus, Milgram’s obedience research represents one of the largest and most integrated research programs in social psychology (Blass, 2000).

By varying his experiments, Milgram identified several conditions that decreased the likelihood of destructive obedience, which are summarized in FIGURE 12.4. For example, willingness to obey diminished sharply when the buffers that separated the teacher from the learner were lessened or removed, such as when both of them were in the same room.

If Milgram’s findings seem to cast an unfavorable light on human nature, there are two reasons to take heart. First, when teachers were allowed to act as their own authority and freely choose the shock level, 95 percent of them did not venture beyond 150 volts—the first point at which the learner protested. Clearly, Milgram’s subjects were not responding to their own aggressive or sadistic impulses, but rather to orders from an authority figure (see Reeder & others, 2008).

Second, Milgram found that people were more likely to muster up the courage to defy an authority when they saw others do so. When Milgram’s subjects observed what they thought were two other subjects disobeying the experimenter, the real subjects followed their lead 90 percent of the time and refused to continue. Like the subjects in Asch’s experiment, Milgram’s subjects were more likely to stand by their convictions when they were not alone in expressing them. Despite these encouraging notes, the overall results of Milgram’s obedience research painted a bleak picture of human nature.

Many people wonder whether Milgram would get the same results if his experiments were repeated today. Are people still as likely to obey an authority figure? There have been several replications or partial replications in recent years, including one by psychologist Jerry Burger and several by entertainment or news media including on the Discovery Channel show Curiosity, a BBC documentary, and DatelineNBC (BBC News, 2008; Burger, 2009; Lowry, 2011; Perry, 2013).

In one example, using methods similar to Milgram’s, French researchers found high levels of obedience in a game-show setting in a TV studio where participants obeyed a television host (Beauvois & others, 2012). In the show, called Game of Death, the researchers used all the trappings of a television production to convince participants that the situation was real—a glamorous and well-known host, professional cameras, spotlights, a comedian to warm up the audience, and a live audience naïve to the actual goal of the situation.

The researchers recruited 76 participants from Paris, having excluded anyone who was aware of Milgram’s research. Participants were asked to shock another “contestant” every time he answered a question incorrectly. (As in Milgram’s study, the “contestant” was an actor who was not actually receiving shocks.) The game show host used prompts similar to those used by Milgram’s experimenter, and she had an added encouragement available to her—having the audience intervene. The researchers explained that “in power-based and situation-based terms, the host-questioner rapport in the present study was very close to the researcher-professor situation in Milgram’s study” (Beauvois & others, 2012).

So, what do you think happened? Eighty-one percent of participants obeyed, a figure higher than, although not statistically different from, Milgram’s findings. Importantly, unlike in Milgram’s era, there was an immediate international outcry about the ethics of putting unwitting participants in such a situation.

More than 40 years after the publication of Milgram’s research, the moral issues that his findings highlighted are still with us. Should military personnel be prosecuted for obeying orders to commit an immoral or illegal act? Who should be held responsible? We discuss a contemporary instance of destructive obedience in the Critical Thinking box below, “Abuse at Abu Ghraib: Why Do Ordinary People Commit Evil Acts?”

The scientific study of conformity and obedience has produced some important insights. The first is the degree to which our behavior is influenced by situational factors (see Benjamin & Simpson, 2009; Zimbardo, 2007). Being at odds with the majority or with authority figures is very uncomfortable for most people—enough so that our judgment and perceptions can be distorted and we may act in ways that violate our conscience.

More important, perhaps, is the insight that each of us does have the capacity to resist group or authority pressure (Bocchiaro & Zimbardo, 2010). Because the central findings of these studies are so dramatic, it’s easy to overlook the fact that some subjects refused to conform or obey despite considerable social and situational pressure (Packer, 2008a). Consider the response of a subject in one of Milgram’s later studies (Milgram, 1974a). A 32-year-old industrial engineer named Jan Rensaleer protested when he was commanded to continue at the 255-volt level:

Experimenter: It is absolutely essential that you continue.

Mr. Rensaleer: Well, I won’t—not with the man screaming to get out.

Experimenter: You have no other choice.

Mr. Rensaleer: I do have a choice. (Incredulous and indignant) Why don’t I have a choice? I came here on my own free will. I thought I could help in a research project. But if I have to hurt somebody to do that, or if I was in his place, too, I wouldn’t stay there. I can’t continue. I’m very sorry. I think I’ve gone too far already, probably.

Like some of the other participants in the obedience and conformity studies, Rensaleer effectively resisted the situational and social pressures that pushed him to obey. As did Army Sergeant Joseph M. Darby, who triggered the investigation of abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison camp in Iraq by turning over a CD with photos of the abuse to authorities. As Darby said, the photos “violated everything that I personally believed in and everything that I had been taught about the rules of war.” Another man who took a stand, stopping and then reporting an abusive incident in the prison, was 1st Lieutenant David Sutton. As he put it, “The way I look at it, if I don’t do something, I’m just as guilty.” TABLE 12.5 summarizes several strategies that can help people resist the pressure to conform or obey in a destructive, dangerous, or morally questionable situation.

How are such people different from those who conform or obey? Unfortunately, there’s no satisfying answer to that question. No specific personality trait consistently predicts conformity or obedience in experimental situations such as those Asch and Milgram created (see Blass, 2000, 2004; Burger, 2009). In other words, the social influences that Asch and Milgram created in their experimental situations can be compelling even to people who are normally quite independent.

Finally, we need to emphasize that conformity and obedience are not completely bad in and of themselves. Quite the contrary. Conformity and obedience are necessary for an orderly society, which is why such behaviors were instilled in all of us as children. The critical issue is not so much whether people conform or obey, because we all do so every day of our lives. Rather, the critical issue is whether the norms we conform to, or the orders we obey, reflect values that respect the rights, well-being, and dignity of others.