Think about: How does Milgram's experiment connect to the Holocaust articles? What does the experiment prove? How could you use the results from the experiment to support your ideas about power of authority and responsibility? What does Milgram's study and the nazi officers actions reveal about the power of authority? What do they reveal about personal responsibility?
The Milgram Experiment
One of
the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was carried out by Stanley
Milgram (1963).
Stanley
Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an experiment 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.
The
experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question "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
(1963) wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to
authority figures as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in
World War II.
Milgram
selected participants for his experiment by advertising for male participants
to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The procedure was
that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find
out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. The draw
was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was
one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).
The
learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had
electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a
room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches
marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450
volts (XXX).
Milgram's
Experiment
Aim:
Milgram
(1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an
instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was
interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities
for example, Germans in WWII.
Procedure:
Volunteers
were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics:
deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose
jobs ranged from unskilled to professional.
At the
beginning of the experiment they were introduced to another participant, who
was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). They drew
straws to determine their roles – leaner or teacher – although this was fixed
and the confederate always ended to the learner. There was also an
“experimenter” dressed in a white lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).
The
“learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair in another room with
electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the
"teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall
its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The
teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a
mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the
shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe
shock).
The
learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose) and for each of these the
teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a
shock and turned to the experimenter for guidance, he was given the standard
instruction /order (consisting of 4 prods):
Prod 1: please continue.
Prod 2: the experiment
requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you
continue.
Prod 4: you have no other choice but to
continue.
Results:
65%
(two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of
450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.
Milgram
did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.
All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience
(DV).
Conclusion:
Ordinary
people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the
extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is
ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up. Obey parents, teachers,
anyone in authority etc.
Milgram
summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:
“The
legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say
very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up
a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary
citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an
experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’
[participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with
the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims,
authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to
almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding
of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”
Factors
Affecting Obedience
The
Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby Milgram varied the basic
procedure (changed the IV). By doing this Milgram could identify which
factors affected obedience (the DV).
Status of Location
|
Personal Responsibility
|
·
The
orders were given in an important location (Yale University) – when Milgram’s
study was conducted in a run-down office in the city, obedience levels
dropped.
·
This
suggests that prestige increases obedience.
|
·
When
there is less personal responsibility obedience increases.
·
When
participants could instruct an assistant to press the switches, 95% (compared
to 65% in the original study) shocked to the maximum 450 volts.
·
This
relates to Milgram's Agency Theory.
|
Legitimacy of Authority Figure
|
Status of Authority Figure
|
·
People
tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as
morally right and / or legally based.
·
This
response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for
example in the family, school and workplace.
|
·
Milgram’s
experimenter wore a laboratory coat (a symbol of scientific expertise) which
gave him a high status.
·
But
when the experimenter dressed in everyday clothes obedience was very low.
·
The uniform of the authority figure can give them
status.
|
Peer Support
|
Proximity of Authority Figure
|
·
Peer
support – if a person has the social support of their friend(s) then
obedience is less likely.
·
Also
the presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces
the level of obedience. This happened in Milgram’s experiment when
there was a “disobedient model”.
|
·
Authority
figure distant: It is easier to resist the orders from an authority figure if
they are not close by. When the experimenter instructed and prompted
the teacher by telephone from another room, obedience fell to 20.5%.
·
When
the authority figure is close by then obedience is more likely.
|
Methodological Issues
The Milgram
studies were
conducted in laboratory type conditions and we must ask if this tells us much
about real-life situations. We obey in a variety of real-life situations that
are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it
would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The
sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military
context.
Milgram's sample was biased: The participants in Milgram's study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?
Milgram's sample was biased: The participants in Milgram's study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?
In
Milgram's study the participants were a self-selecting sample. This is because
they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper
advertisement (selecting themselves). They may also have a typical
"volunteer personality" – not all the newspaper readers responded so
perhaps it takes this personality type to do so. Finally, they probably
all had a similar income since they were willing to spend some hours working
for a given amount of money.
Ethical Issues
o Deception – the participants
actually believed they were shocking a real person, and were unaware the
learner was a confederate of Milgram's.
o Protection
of participants -
Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the
potential to cause psychological harm.
o
However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully
after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that
they came to no harm.
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