Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 1 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 2 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 3 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 4 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 5 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 6 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 7 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 8 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 9 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. STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 10 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 STANLEY MILGRAM AND TODAY’S UNDERSTANDING 11 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