Download Stanley Milgram and Today`s Understanding Of His Experiment

STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING
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Stanley Milgram and Today’s Understanding
Of His Experiment
Psychology as a discipline is always changing; we are constantly learning new facts
about how we learn, how individuals interpret emotion, and just how we are constantly evolving
as individuals and as a society. So as one can imagine, researchers are constantly busy trying to
stay updated and current with their information. In 1961 a Yale University psychologist, Stanley
Milgram, conducted a series of experiments to investigate a Nazi official’s defense that he was
simply just following orders when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jewish and misfit people
during the Holocaust (Cherry, 2014). For many years it was believed that indeed when given
orders by someone in a position of power we tend to do as told, but recent studies have shown it
is less about direct obedience but more so due to the environmental circumstances we are given
the orders in. This is important to know about because it helps us better understand both how and
why we do some of the things we do.
Literary Review
Milgram recruited several men using newspaper advertising, and in exchange for their
participation, they were compensated four dollars and fifty cents each. The advertisement ad
said the research study was looking for participants to help in a lab experiment that would
investigate learning. Milgram eventually had up to 40 males, between the ages of 20 and 50
whose jobs ranked anywhere between unskilled to professional for the first experimental group.
During the experimental trials Milgram made a shock generating machine that started at 30volts
and increased in 15volt increment up to 450 volts. The shocks had labels that varied from “slight
shock,” “moderate shock,” “danger: sever shock,” and three labeled “XXX.” Once participants
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started to arrive they were introduced to a hired actor of Milgram’s and both drew straws to
determine who would be the “learner” and who would be the “teacher” though the drawing was
always rigged and the hired actor ended up being the learner in every case. Along with the roles
of learner and teacher, there was also an experimenter who was also a paid actor hired by
Milgram. Two rooms were used for the experiment held at Yale University one kept the learner
and the other had the experimenter, teacher, and shock generator in it. Once the learner was in
the separate room and strapped into a chair with electrodes stuck to him, the experiment started,
and the teacher read out a series of questions to the learner who purposely choose mostly wrong
answers and forced the teacher to have to administer shock at increasing values. In the case that
the teacher did not want to continue, the experimenter had four preapproved responses that they
were supposed to say to get the teacher to continue. The four phases varied from “Please
continue,” “The experiment requires you to continue,” “It is absolutely essential that you
continue,” and lastly “You have no other choice but to continue” (McLeod, 2007).
The results of the experiment concluded that most people do what they are told by
someone who is seen as an authority figure. Twenty-six out of the forty in the first experimental
group delivered the maximum shocks at 450 volts while only fourteen stopped usually before
hitting the 150 volt mark (Burger 2014). Milgram did the experiment several times with various
different groups, some including women, but stayed within the 20 – 50 age bracket with a total
of 800 participants in the study (Sherwin 2014). More than two-thirds, or 65%, of the
participants administered the volts up to the 450 mark even with the discomfort of hearing the
prerecorded tapes of the learner cry out and often plead with them to stop. The learner even
went as far to cry out for them to stop due him having a heart condition. While many of the
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participants kept delivering deathly shock values to the learner, it is imperative to state that many
of the teachers showed discomfort and/or anger towards the experimenter who coerced them to
continue the experiment (Cherry 2014).
Milgram eventually concluded in his writing of “the Perils of Obedience” that,
“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.” (Milgram, 1974)
He also concluded that many people followed through with administering all levels of shock due
to being in an altered state of consciousness. Most people are in what psychologist call an
autonomous state where they are in direct control of their action and assume all responsibility for
the results of their choices and actions. Milgram argued that during the experiment participants
entered what is referred to as an agentic state. The agentic state was defined as, “a state of mind
in which critical reflection and ability to defy authority subside, allowing subconscious
individual-level propensities to come to the fore.” This is basically saying the participants
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entered a state of mind where they no longer held themselves accountable for their actions and
placed the blame on the authority figure giving the orders (Jetten and Mols, 2014).
While many researchers somewhat agree with Milgram’s statement, recent studies have
shown that the high obedience rate was largely due to a number of situational factors that were
present in the set up of the experiment. The four main situational features are the incremental
nature of the task, the novelty of the situation and the kind of normative information made
available, the opportunity to deny or diffuse responsibility, and the limited opportunity to ponder
decisions (Burger 2014).
Many studies have found that as humans have a need to be consistent, or at least seem
that way to others around us. An example used by Burger, was getting one to firstly openly
admit they are pro-environment has a positive correlation with them later donation or signing a
petition for the cause. After that they start to view themselves as the type of person who supports
causes and gives back to the community. Performing the small task of openly admitting to being
something led to a change in attitude and behavior, which is the second part of what is known as
the foot-in-the-door effect. Milgram understood this method and worked it into his experiment
by starting with the lowest voltage, slowly increasing the voltage. So, by the time the teacher
gets to 150 volts and hears the prerecorded muffled screams of the learner they have already
delivered shocks 10 times or so putting them in the pattern of doing so. Since we are creatures of
habit and want to seem consistent each lever pulled to deliver a shock made it easier to pull the
next one which is why many people continued on. This is proven in the experiment because
majority of the stopping points were generally following the 150 volt mark. Studies suggested
that when first hearing the learner protest and ask for the procedure to stop, and the teacher had
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to make a choice that decided if the learner’s rights to stop over weighed the experimenter’s to
keep going. Sadly, they choose the experiment had more precedent over the learner, which was
seen as them simply being consistent with the participant’s earlier decision. It has been summed
up, with this theory, that the teacher was guilty of focusing on the previous step, instead of the
next step and ignoring all of the steps that led up to the final outrageous act (Burger 2014).
The next situational feature mentioned is the novelty of the situation and normative
information, meaning people who find themselves in certain situations with preconceived ideas
about what is supposed to happen and how they are expected to respond by interrupting
situational clues as information on the correct way to behave. In other words we find ourselves
in situation and do what society says is the right thing or proper response. People think that if
they do what society says is right, and subsequently what everyone else does, then they can avoid
embarrassment and punishment that would come from going against the grain. When we are in a
predicament and are looking for clues on how to act typically we look to someone of authority,
or even an expert. In some cases, we could and typically would turn to teachers, doctors, and
advisors or someone of expertise in a situation we need guidance in. If those people are not
around then we look to see how others in the same situation act (Burger 2014). In the
experiment, it is shown that with the learner pleading for the experiment to stop that people
became confused on what they should do which is where the expert experimenter came in and
urged for them to continue assuring them it was necessary and the right thing to do. Most of us
when looking to an authority figure and are told something is right, despite our reservations we
comply because they are an expert and seemingly know what they are talking about.
In two of Milgram’s different variations of the experiment he tested how people reacted
to what they thought the others participants were doing. In the experiments generally they
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assumed that everyone else who had the role of being the teacher continued all the way through
which is how they partly justified continuing all the way through. Except in experiment group
15, there were two experimenters present who seemed of equal status one who advised the
teacher to continue and the other who advised the teacher to stop once the learner cried out at the
150 volt mark, and of the 20 participants in this study 18 stopped after hearing the learner cry out
and one even stopped before that.
Experiment group 17 had similar results in the majority refusing to continue after
reaching a concerning voltage level. In this group, there were three teachers in the room with the
experimenter. Except in this group teacher one, teacher two, and the experimenter were hired
actors and the only real participant was teacher number three. Teacher one was in charge of
reading the word pairs, teacher two was in charge of saying if the answers were right or wrong,
and teacher three was in charge of pressing the shock levers. At 150 volts teacher one always
refused to continue and teacher two refused to continue after 210 volts. Most of the real
participants refused to continue right after teacher two’s refusal. It is recorded that only 10% of
the participants continued up to the 450 volt mark (Burger 2014). These several experiments
helped researches greatly by proving in certain situations we do look to others and/or experts for
clues on how we are supposed to behave, and more often than not we tend to follow the
behavioral clues we are given.
The next factor which was highly perceived by many in the field of being an explanation
to why many participants continue all the way through the experiment was due to the ability to
reflect the blame on to something else or justify it in some way. It has been shown that when we
feel we are anonymous or won’t have any direct responsibility for the consequences, we do
things we would not normally do, which can include harmful activities (Bandura 1999). Some
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studies have actually even shown that when a part of a crowd, it is more likely we will try to pass
the blame instead of accepting responsibility for our actions. Milgram perfected this by allowing
he participant/teacher to be in the room with the experimenter who was giving them the direction
to administer the shocks and by deceiving the participants with the newspaper article suggesting
that this somehow would benefit science and the study of learning. In a paper published in the
“British Journal of Social Psychology” professor Alex Haslam was quoted saying that the main
reason participants were not extremely distressed was because they did not believe they had done
anything wrong […] which was largely due to Milgram’s ability to convince them they had made
a contribution to science. Going on to say, “The perpetrators are generally motivated, not by
desire to do evil, but by a sense that what they are doing matters and is an important contribution
to the scientific community” (2012).
The last situational factor believed to contribute to such high participation rates in the
teachers to reach the 450volt mark was the fact that they had very little time to reflect on their
actions. Research has shown that for whatever reason when people are given a short amount of
time to think about their actions they do not consider all the options and do not get the chance to
ask themselves if this is consistent with their morals and values as a person. And as a result of
not fully getting to contemplate the choices they are making people rely on the situational clues,
like previously stated, instead of their morals and values which can lead to them feeling some
sort of regret following their actions. Milgram incorporated this into his experiment by
instructing the experimenter to move the teacher along at a rushed pace and at the first sign of
hesitation encourage and prompt the teacher to continue along (Burger 2014).
While most participants reported feeling regretful and bad after they had time to reflect
on the situation and their actions, most changed their minds once they were debriefed and made
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aware that the learner was not really administered the shocks and was okay. Though some were
still upset after learning the facts and had even wished they had not been a part of the experiment
at all (Shea 2013).
DISCUSSION
At first glance Milgram’s experiment does seem to show direct results of ordinary taking
and following orders of the experimenter because he is seen to be an authority figure and in
charge, thus suggesting that ordinary Joes would be willing to potentially kill a man by
delivering a deathly amount of shock to him because he was ordered to do so by someone in a
place of authority. While that theory was accepted for many years, researches and psychologist
now believe it was a mixture of the various different situational factors. In one article, Haslam
and Reicher analyze Milgram’s study and conclude that though many participants felt
uncomfortable and while they both verbally and nonverbally communicated this to the
experimenter there was no room in the experiment plan for them to stop as they were made to
believe, so they continued. And when the experimenter encouraged them to continue most
complied when he reminded them that this would benefit the science community, but when he
gave the participants a direct order, “You have no other choice, you must go on,” there was a
decline in those who choose to continue further (Haslam and Reicher 2012)
Many of the theories concluded that it was a combination of factors could also be due to
us wanting to find a good way to justify the acts we committed. Going back to Milgram’s
original purpose to explain how Nazi officials were able to follow orders and kill millions of
Jews, researchers have highlighted the situational factors Hitler implemented in the
concentration camps and throughout his political campaign to make the people believe in his
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vision and to follow his orders. None of us want to believe that people are that cynical enough to
become apart of a terrible destructive process just because we are ordered to do so. So in turn we
look for ways to explain how we, as humans, are capable of doing such awful things. Recent
research has proven, through various creditable examples, that it indeed could be a variation of
factors, but ultimately there are facts to prove the recent theory and both milgram’s original
theory to be true so it is upon us and our interpretation of the events to decide for ourselves.
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References
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and
Social Psychology Review, 3, 193–209. doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3.
Burger, J. M. (2014). Situational Features in Milgram's Experiment That Kept His Participants
Shocking. Journal Of Social Issues, 70(3), 489-500. doi:10.1111/josi.12073
Cherry, K. (2014, April 1). The Milgram Obendience Experiment: The Perils of Obedience.
Retrieved September 20, 2014, from
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
Haslam, S., & Reicher, S. D. (2012). Contesting the “Nature” Of Conformity: What Milgram and
Zimbardo's Studies Really Show. Plos Biology, 10(11), 1-4.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426
Jetten, J. and Mols, F. (2014), 50:50 Hindsight: Appreciating Anew the Contributions of
Milgram's Obedience Experiments. Journal of Social Issues, 70: 587–602.
doi: 10.1111/josi.12080
McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html
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McMinn, J. G. (2014). When Heroes Fail: A Re-Framing of Milgram's Shock Experiments.
Journal Of Social & Clinical Psychology, 33(3), 292-294.doi:10.1521/jscp.2014.33.3.292
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harpercollins
Shea, C. (2013, September 29). Stanley Milgram and the uncertainty of evil. Retrieved
September 21, 2014, from http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/09/28/stanleymilgram-and-uncertainty-evil/qUjame9xApiKc6evtgQRqN/story.html
Sherwin, A. (2014, September 5). Famous Milgram 'electric shocks' experiment drew
wrong conclusions about evil, say psychologist. Retrieved September 24, 2014, from
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-electric-shocksexperiment-drew-wrong-conclusions-about-evil-say-psychologists-9712600.html