The Milgram Experiment

A lesson in depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world was truly stunned by the awful revelations about what had happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. If the Allied forces required vindication for their armed struggle against the Nazis, it was surely found behind the barbed wire of each of the nearly 15,000 Nazi camps, and more specifically in the gas chambers and crematoria of death camps such as Auschwitz.

However, many of the Nazi criminals who were responsible for these terrible deeds were either dead or missing. Indeed, some, like Adolf Eichmann, had escaped, emigrated and changed names to elude re-capture. Eichmann, a high ranking official of the Nazi Party, was put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Eichmann’s main defence was that he was that he “had to obey” orders to carry out the atrocities.

The questions raised here are:

• Were Eichmann and his Nazi accomplices and collaborators in the Holocaust just following orders?
• Can we call all obedient Nazis’ accomplices to murder?

Stanley Milgram answered the call to this problem by performing a series of studies on the Obedience to Authority. Milgram's work began at Harvard where he was working towards his Ph.D. The experiments on which his initial research was based were done at Yale from 1961-1962.

In response to a newspaper ad offering US $4.50 for one hour's work, a subject turned up to take part in a Psychology experiment investigating memory and learning. He was introduced to a stern looking experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasant and friendly co-subject. The experimenter explained that the experiment would be looking into the role of punishment in learning, and that one subject would be the ‘teacher’ and one subject would be the ‘learner’. Lots were drawn to determine these roles, and it was decided that the subject who answered the ad would become the teacher. (Milgram made sure that the lots were fixed so that the subject would always end up as the teacher and the co-subject –an actor- would always be the learner.)

Thus the teacher and learner were then taken to another room where the learner was strapped to a chair to prevent movement and an electrode was attached to their arm. Next, the teacher was taken to an adjoining room which contained a generator. The teacher was instructed to begin the experiment by reading a simple list of two word pairs, such as apple – shoe, or ship – coat, and ask the learner to recite them back. If the learner answered correctly, then the teacher moved on to the next word pair. If the learner’s answer was incorrect, the teacher was supposed to administer a punishment –an electric shock which began at 15 volts. The experiment would continue by moving on to the next word pair.

The generator had 30 switches in 15-volt increments and each was labelled with a voltage ranging from 15 up to 450 volts. Some switches also had a safety rating, ranging from "Slight Shock" to "Danger: Severe Shock". The final two switches were labelled "XXX".

 

Take a minute to think about this –

Where do you think most people would stop giving shocks?

The teacher was supposed to increase the shock each time the learner faulted. However, it was never revealed to the teacher that he/she was not actually administering shocks to the learner because the learner was a student or an actor who was never harmed.

Although every one of the participants was prepared to administer the shocks up to this high level, it was often not without resistance. When the learner hesitated, or made a mistake, or simply cried out in pain, the teachers might stop or look to the researcher for reassurance. For these situations Milgram had prepared a script to be used by the researcher to encourage the teacher to continue. With each hesitation the researcher would say to the teacher, "please continue" or with subsequent hesitations, "the experiment requires that you continue" or, "you have no choice, you must go on". As the teacher continued they would hear the cries of the learner over the intercom as the shock was administered. At first, with the low levels of shock they would hear a slight grunt or moan. As the shocks got higher they would hear, "I can't stand the pain" or, "I don't want to go on". After 330v the learner became silent, but the researcher said that this must be interpreted as a mistake and therefore the shocks had to continue up to the full 450v.

 

Milgram commented, “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, and was rapidly approaching nervous collapse. He constantly pulled on his ear lobe and twisted his hands. At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered “Oh God! Lets stop it!” And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter and obeyed to the end”

Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts!

Milgram also conducted several follow-up experiments to determine what might change the likelihood of maximum shock delivery, i.e. death! In one condition, the Touch-Proximity Condition, the teacher was required to actually hold the hand of the learner on a ‘Shock Plate’ in order to give him shocks above 150 volts. The most amazing thing to note from this follow-up experiment is that 32% of the subjects in the Proximity-Touch Condition held the hand of the learner on the Shock Plate while administering shocks in excess of 400 volts! Further experiments showed that teachers were less obedient when the experimenter communicated with them via the telephone versus in person, and males were just as likely to be obedient as females, although females tended to be more nervous.

Milgram's obedience experiment was replicated by other researchers. The experiments spanned a 25-year period from 1961 to 1985 and have been repeated in Australia, South Africa and in several European countries. In one study conducted in Germany, over 85% of the subjects administered a lethal electric shock to the learner!

Today the field of psychology would deem this study highly unethical, but it revealed some extremely important findings. The theory that only the most severe monsters on the sadistic fringe of society would submit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings show that, "two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of ‘obedient' subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes (Obedience to Authority).