Milgram & Obedience

Milgram → background → Stanley Milgram

• 1933 - born in new york 

  • Jewish family - mother romanian, father hungarian

• 1954 - B.A political science 

• 1954/60 - PhD on national character & replication of Asch paradigm with 

  • Different cultures, groups & procedural modifications

  • Interested in ethics in Asch paradigm - only 1/93 regretted particpating 

    • Does learning something about ourselves distress us

Milgram → background → holocaust

• Milgram struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible

  • What led to the persecution of jews, homosexuals, gypsies and communists by nazis?

Banality of evil 

• Hannah Arendt reported on the Eichmann trial

  • Eichmann did not appear to be a monster but an inspired bureaucrat who sat at his desk and did his job

• BBC The devils confession - the Lost Eichmann tapes

Milgram → background → Lack of relevance of psychology

• Gap between research and reality 

  • “…to think of a way to make Asch’s conformity experiment more humanly significant. I was dissatisfied that the test of conformity was a judgement about lines. […] At that instant, my thought shifted. […] Just how far would a person go under the experimenter’s orders? It was an incandescent moment. […]

Milgram → studies

• Often remembered as one study > large series of studies with24 variations

  • Number of subjects across studies = 780+

• Initial study - no ‘heart condition’, no learner complains

  • Results = 100% compliances

Milgram → studies → famous study

• Bargaining with the experimenter to filla w

• Conditions: 

  • Learner with heart condition

  • Learner (a recording) compaints, moans and shouts

  • Physical separation learner & teacher-p

  • Experimenter in the same room as “teacher”

  • Experimenter and learner are actors/confederates of the experiment 

Milgram → studies → famous study → findings

• Results

  • Number of p out of n=40 in basic study that stopped at particular points on the experiment

  • 13% stopped at 150 volts

  • 10% stopped at 165

  • 5% stopped  210 volts

  • 65% continued to 450%

Milgram → methods → ethics

• Bettelhein (1964)

  • the reserach was so vile that nothing these experiments show has any value, they are in line with human experiments of the naxis

• New york times

  • It wasn’t the participants who showed ‘destructive obedience’, but the experimenters — as the studies were clearly extremely distressing for participants (shown in lip-biting, nervous laughter, 14/40; seizures, 3/40).

• Baumrind (1964)

  • I do regard the emotional disturbance described by Milgram as potentially harmful because it could easily effect an alteration in the subject’s selfimage.

Milgram → methods → ethics of stopping

• Protocol - experimenter uses 4 prods but no other pressure 

  • P claimed this to be untrue 

    • E prompted may more times (closer to 26)

    • Women in particular were railroaded by E

      • E.g e bought them coffee

• Prods

  • If T objects, experimenter responds with series of prods

    • Please continue 

    • The experiment requires that you continue

    • It is absolutely essential that you continue

    • You have no other choice, you must go on.

      • Reactance - when freedom is restricted 

Milgram → methods → ethics of debriefing

• Milgran claimed that all p were debriefed

  • Gina Perry looked into archival data 50 years latere and interviewed small number of p

    • 2-min debriefing in which behaviour was explained as “natural” 

      • A fuller explanation was mailed 1 year after participation

    • Milgram deliberately delayed debriefing until the end of the study to ensure that other participants did not already know its nature

      •  75% were not immediately debriefed until the last 4 out of 23 studies 

• “[…] the experiment left such an effect on me that I spent the night in a cold sweat and nightmares because of fears that I might have killed that man in the chair.” (subject 711)

Milgram → methods → ethics of follow up

• Milgram followed up with his p by obtaining post-experimental feedback from 92% of p

  • 10% was extremely upset 

  • 50% i was somewhat nervous

  • 35% i was relatively calm 

  • 5% i was completely calm

  • 7% bothered by it quite a bit 

  • 29% bothered a little

  • 64% no bothered at all

Milgram → methods → replication

• Basic study has been replicated 24x from 1963-1985 in USA, europe, australia and middle east

• Modal findings = 65% of p go to 450 volts

Milgram → methods → variations

• Just like asch, milgram varies the basic study paradigm systematically

• 

• Defiant model - 2 teachers (one of them real p other the confederate

Milgram → debate & controversy → demand characteristics

• P were responding to demand characteristics (Orne, 1962; Orne & Holland, 1968)

• P noticed that the L never responds to them

  • Sounds appeared to be audio recordings

• Lab report by research assistant Taketo Murata (Perry, 2012)

  • Doubters (~50%): about 66% did NOT show obedience 

• Milgram: Subjects had acted shamefully and used ‘”I had doubts” as self-defence to rationalise their behaviour

Milgram → debate & controversy → ecological validity

• Hofling et al. (1966): nurses who overdosed

• Sheridan & King (1972): puppies as victims

• Slater et al. (2006): virtual victim

• Horizon (2009) – How violent are you?

Milgram → debate & controversy → theory

• Research shows that people conform to authority 

  • But not why they do it or in the variations affects

• Milgram identified a number of key features

  • Readiness to relinquish responsibility

  • Entering ‘the agentic state’

    • Willingness to accept another’s definition of reality

  • Concentric fields of influence

Milgram → debate & controversy → Blass (2002)

• points to several other key features of the study that help understand larger-scale events:

  • Incremental steps

  • Self-consistency

• Theories that have been used to explain the study results

  • Social impact (Latane, 1981)

  • Social identity (Turner, 1991)

Milgram → debate & controversy → Social identity Turner (1991)

• We are influenced by authority figure to the extent that

  • identify with the group they represent

  • influenced by their instructions to harm other to the extent that we don't identify with others

    • Engaged followership - (Haslam et al., 2014; Reicher et al., 2012)

Milgram → debate & controversy → Rubicon

• Most people dropped out at 150

  • 150V: “Ugh! Experimenter! That’s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out.”

• Variations change the interaction → reducing obedience

• Decreasing Identification with experiment reduced compliance 

Milgram → debate & controversy → Burger (2009)

• Replicated Milgram's study but his findings questioned whether participants really were following orders by looking at responses to experimental prods:

  • Please continue → 64% obeyed

  • The experiment required that you continue → 46%

  • It is absolutely essential that you continue → 10%

  • you have no other choice, you must continue → 100% disobeyed

• Prod 4 is an “order” → underlying reason for continuing may not be “blind obedience”

  • following an authority’s order unquestioningly

Milgram → debate & controversy → Interpretation

The banality of evil 

• Witnessed hundreds of ordinary people submit to authority in experiments

• Concludes that Arendt's idea of the banality of evil is closer to truth

• People shocked victims due to sense of obligation, not aggression

• Fundamental lesson: ordinary people, doing their jobs, can become agents in destructive processes

Milgram → impact & legacy

• probably the most famous experiments in psychology

• informed debate in multiple disciplines

• Massive impact on scientific & public understanding of all forms of ‘evil’ → Affected ideas on

  • Ethical Considerations Around P distress & long-term effects of participation 

  • Studying people in “natural” experiments that mimic real-life

Milgram → impact & legacy → Wrightsman (1974)

• Initial study was a demonstration, not an experiment

• Research program lacked initial theory or tests of significance

• Many findings subject to alternative explanations

• Saddened that obedience studies define 1960s in social psychology