Stanley Milgram's Destructive Obedience

As human beings, we possess different qualities that influences the way we behave. Throughout history, psychologists performed a myriad of experiments to understand different forms of human behavior. One well known psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment that concentrated in understanding “destructive obedience”. Milgram’s interest in researching “destructive obedience” came from the Holocaust. “Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose”. Milgram’s experiment proposed that the murder of innocent people occurred because of the obedience from the soldiers to their leader. The experiment focuses on analyzing on why the degree of obedience from each subject varies from their actions. Milgram’s experiment makes it transparent that obedience is a “determinant of behavior”. In 1961, Stanley Milgram selected a group of
forty males from New Haven to be part of an experiment that focused on obedience; however they believed the experiment was on a “study of memory and learning”. Prior to the commencement of the experiment, each person was assigned a role in the experiment. Each experiment had one experimenter, subject and victim. In each experiment the “subject administered electric shocks to the victim”. The shock would be administered to the victim when the victim did not correctly respond to the questions asked by the subject. The inability of the victim to correctly match the correct word from four terms articulated by the subject indicated punishment. Each time the victim responded with an incorrect answer the experimenter ordered the subject to intensify the shock level. At one point during the experiment, the victim would not respond to the subject’s questions because the shock level increased too much. Advice would then be given from the experimenter on this matter. The experimenter demanded the subject to intensify the shock level when this occurred. Also feedback from the experimenter was given when the subject was reluctant to continue the experiment. Experiments are conducted so that we can determine if our findings matches our proposed theory.
Prior to determining that Milgram’s experiment successfully demonstrated the subject’s obedience to the experimenter, it is essential to identify the dependent measures. “The primary dependent measure for any subject is the maximum shock he administers before he goes any further”. To determine if the subject was obedient, the experimenter looked at how many shock levels were administered. The subject is considered a “defiant subject if he administered below thirteen shock levels and an obedient subject if he administered all shock levels commanded”. Obtaining sufficient evidence is important before drawing any conclusions; therefore Milgram considered the predictions of fourteen Yale seniors where he gave them the same “experimental situation”. The predictions from the Yale Seniors and the actual results were different. The students predicted that only an “insignificant amount would go through the end of the shock series” and the actual results stated that more than half made it to the
end. As you can see Milgram’s experiment demonstrates how powerful obedience can be. A major factor to twenty six out of forty subjects completing the shock series was the effect generated from the procedures. Throughout the procedures the experimenter skews pertinent information regarding the study in order to deceive the subjects into believing that the other participants are victims. Also, subjects believed that it was incumbent upon them to remain in the study, notwithstanding the pain they were seemingly inflicting. Therefore the experiment demonstrated that the people adhere to authority figures, especially in stressful and tense situations. Reaction I believe the study was highly unethical. The experimenter utilized deceptive tactics in order to create the illusion that the subjects were electrocuting participants in another room. Also subjects were incognizant of the potential risks of the study. In other words, they were uninformed of its psychological implications, for it engendered great distress for its subjects. Also I believe that the victims were psychologically effected because of the situation that they were put in. Though the experimenter stated that no permanent physical damage from the shocks would transpire, he did not indicate the damage it may do mentally. One key factor that influenced the subject to keep administering shocks was their authoritative figure throughout the experiment. At one point in the experiment the subject was indecisive to proceed with the experiment because the victim was not responding to the questions; however after receiving feedback from the experimenter the issue was resolved. Another potential key determinant factor from the subject’s willingness to complete the experiment is to gain some knowledge from the experiment. The subject may be curious in knowing if the experimenters proposed theory is plausible. In my opinion this experiment raises ethical issues; however I believe the experiment portrayed high levels of obedience. I believe that the subjects consistently responding to the orders given from the experimenter demonstrates obedient behavior. Milgram’s experiment illustrated how a “basic element in the structure of social life” can influence an individual to adhere the orders given from someone with a higher rank.

Reference Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378.