Milgram's Obedience Experiments – Key Theories of Social Psychology (Senior 6 Psychology) | Ganzaa

Key Theories of Social Psychology

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Senior 6 · Psychology

Key Theories of Social Psychology

5 lessons

Lesson 4 of 5

Milgram's Obedience Experiments

25 min

"The experiment requires that you continue"

In 1961 Stanley Milgram, a young psychologist at Yale University in the United States, placed an advertisement in a local newspaper offering US$4.50 for one hour in a "study of memory". The men who came, aged 20 to 50 and from many occupations, met a second "volunteer", a pleasant middle-aged man, and drew lots for roles. The draw was fixed: the real participant was always the teacher; the other man, an actor working for Milgram, was always the learner.

The learner was strapped into a chair in the next room, with an electrode on his wrist. The teacher sat in front of a shock generator with 30 switches from 15 to 450 volts, labelled from "Slight Shock" to "Danger: Severe Shock" and finally "XXX". Every time the learner made a mistake on a word-pair memory test, the teacher was to give a shock one step higher. No real shocks were given, but the teacher did not know that.

The learner made many mistakes. At 300 volts he pounded on the wall, and after 315 volts he fell silent. If the teacher hesitated, the experimenter, calm and in a grey laboratory coat, used four standard prods in turn: "Please continue", "The experiment requires that you continue", "It is absolutely essential that you continue" and "You have no other choice, you must go on."

Before the study, Yale psychology students predicted that only about 1% of people would go to the end. In fact, all 40 men in the first published study went to at least 300 volts, and 26 of 40 (65%) went all the way to 450 volts. Many sweated, trembled, laughed nervously or protested, yet continued (Milgram, 1963).

Definition

Obedience: carrying out a direct order from a person seen as a legitimate authority.

Agentic state: Milgram's term for a state of mind in which a person sees himself or herself as the instrument of another's wishes, and so no longer responsible for the action. Its opposite is the autonomous state, in which people act on their own judgement and feel responsible.

Legitimate authority: power that people accept as rightful because of a person's position in a social hierarchy, such as a teacher, officer or scientist.

1. The variations

Milgram ran more than twenty variations (published in 1974 in Obedience to Authority). Some of them:

Variation	% who went to 450 V	What it suggests
Learner in the same room as the teacher	40%	Seeing the victim reduces obedience
Teacher must press the learner's hand onto a shock plate	30%	Physical closeness reduces it further
Experimenter gives orders by telephone	20.5%	Authority must be present to be obeyed
Run-down office in Bridgeport, not Yale	47.5%	The institution's prestige mattered somewhat
Orders given by an "ordinary man", not the scientist	20%	Legitimacy of the authority matters
Two other "teachers" (confederates) refuse to go on	10%	Disobedient peers free people to resist

2. Milgram's explanations

The agentic state: participants handed responsibility to the experimenter. Many asked, "Who is responsible if he is hurt?" and continued once told, "I am responsible."
Legitimacy: science and Yale gave the experimenter authority.
Gradual commitment: each shock was only 15 volts more than the last, so there was no obvious point at which to stop: a foot-in-the-door process.
Buffers: the wall between teacher and learner made it easier to continue.

3. Evaluating the studies

Ethics

Diana Baumrind (1964) argued that participants were deceived and put under severe stress without proper consent. Milgram replied that participants were debriefed and that, in a follow-up questionnaire, 84% said they were glad to have taken part. Today's ethics codes would not allow the study as it was run, and it is one of the main reasons those codes exist.

Validity: did participants believe it?

Martin Orne and Charles Holland (1968) argued that many participants must have suspected the shocks were fake: a real scientist would not let someone be harmed.
Gina Perry (2012), working through Milgram's archive recordings, found that many participants expressed doubts, and that the experimenter sometimes went beyond the four standard prods, so the procedure was less standardised than the published papers suggested.
Studies of the prods tell a similar story. In Jerry Burger's replication (described below), and in a study modelled on Milgram's procedure by Alex Haslam, Stephen Reicher and Megan Birney (2014), the only true order, "You have no other choice, you must go on", was the least effective prod: people usually refused when they heard it. They argue that participants continued less because they obeyed blindly and more because they identified with the scientific project. They call this engaged followership.

Replications

Burger (2009) ran an ethical partial replication in the United States, stopping at 150 volts, the point after which most of Milgram's obedient participants never stopped. 70% of his participants were willing to continue past 150 volts, compared with 82.5% in Milgram's comparable condition, a difference that was not statistically significant. Obedience levels found in other countries have varied with the procedure, but high levels of obedience have often been found.

Important

Obedience does not remove responsibility. After the Second World War, international law set out the principle that acting on a superior's orders does not free a person from responsibility "provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him" (Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, adopted by the UN International Law Commission in 1950). Courts that tried crimes of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to Rwanda's national courts and the Gacaca courts, held individuals responsible for their acts. Milgram's work helps explain pressures towards obedience; it is not an excuse, and his own results showed that many people did refuse.

Sprouts: "The Milgram Experiment: Obedience to Authority" (short animation). Watch for the set-up and the 65% result, then compare the video's account with the criticisms in section 3: does it mention the participants' doubts or the role of the prods?

Warning

Common errors. The participants did not give real shocks; they believed they did. And "65% obeyed" refers only to the baseline study: obedience ranged from about 10% to over 90% across Milgram's variations, which is the more important finding.

Tip

Structure for a 12-mark "evaluate Milgram" answer: aim and procedure (brief) → baseline result → two variations and what they show → two ethical points → two validity criticisms (Orne and Holland, Perry) → one replication (Burger) → a conclusion on what the studies really show.

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Practice

Define obedience and the agentic state.
Describe the procedure of Milgram's baseline study in five steps.
State the main result, and what students had predicted.
Choose two variations and explain what each shows about obedience.
Apply Milgram's ideas: a new nurse is told by a senior doctor on the telephone to give a dose of medicine above the safe limit. Predict whether she is likely to obey, giving two reasons from Milgram's variations.
Explain the idea of "engaged followership".
Evaluate the ethics of Milgram's research.
"Milgram showed that ordinary people will blindly obey any authority." Assess this statement.

Show answersHide answers

Obedience: carrying out a direct order from a person seen as a legitimate authority. Agentic state: seeing oneself as the instrument of another's wishes, not responsible for one's actions.
(1) Men recruited by advertisement for a "memory study"; (2) rigged draw makes the participant the teacher; (3) learner (actor) strapped in next room; (4) teacher gives a shock rising by 15 V for each error, up to 450 V; (5) experimenter uses four standard prods if the teacher hesitates.
All 40 went to at least 300 V; 65% went to 450 V. Students had predicted about 1%.
For example: orders by telephone (20.5%) shows authority must be present; two rebelling peers (10%) shows that social support for disobedience frees people to refuse.
Some pressure to obey because a doctor is a legitimate authority (as the scientist was), but the order comes by telephone, which in Milgram's variation reduced obedience to 20.5%, and colleagues present might refuse or question it. Professional knowledge that the dose is unsafe also weakens the agentic state.
Participants continued because they identified with the experimenter's scientific goals, not because they were simply following orders; direct orders actually produced refusal.
Against: deception, lack of informed consent, extreme stress, pressure not to withdraw. For: debriefing, 84% glad to have taken part, findings of great social importance that could not easily be obtained otherwise. Judgement: important findings, but it would not be approved today; modern partial replications (Burger) show how to study obedience more ethically.
Against: obedience varied from about 10% to over 90% across conditions; the only true order produced refusals; many doubted the shocks were real; one-third refused even in the baseline. For: high obedience rates were found in many conditions and replications. Judgement: Milgram showed that situations can produce high obedience, not that obedience is blind or universal.

Sources and credits

Works described: Milgram, S. (1963), "Behavioral study of obedience", Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67; Milgram, S. (1974), Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Harper and Row; Baumrind, D. (1964), American Psychologist 19; Orne, M. T. and Holland, C. H. (1968), International Journal of Psychiatry 6; Perry, G. (2012), Behind the Shock Machine, Scribe; Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D. and Birney, M. E. (2014), "Nothing by mere authority", Journal of Social Issues 70; Burger, J. M. (2009), "Replicating Milgram: would people still obey today?", American Psychologist 64; Burger, J. M., Girgis, Z. M. and Manning, C. C. (2011), "In their own words", Social Psychological and Personality Science 2.
Principles of International Law recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, International Law Commission, United Nations (1950).
Video: "The Milgram Experiment: Obedience to Authority", Sprouts, embedded from YouTube.

Written by Ganzaa: the text, the diagram (Figure 1), the table and the exercises.

1"The experiment requires that you continue"

21. The variations

32. Milgram's explanations

43. Evaluating the studies