Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiments

Would you continue to induce shock waves through someone’s body if they pleaded for their lives screaming “Let me out of here. My heart's bothering me. Let me out, I tell you. (Hysterically) You have no right to hold me here. Let me out!” (Milgram, 1965) You would hope that any decent human being would sympathise and realise that enough is enough. But Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment found that an astonishing 26 out of 40 (Milgram, 1963) of your average, everyday American men would shock an innocent human being to the point of death even after hearing these pleads.

In 1963, psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to investigate why millions of innocent people were slaughtered during World War II. The ideas of the massacres could have originated
in the mind of one man who could have inflicted his authority onto others making them obey his orders (Milgram 1973).

The subjects of this experiment were 40 males aged 20 to 50. They were from New Haven and surrounding communities who found a newspaper advertisement offering them $4.50 for their participation in a psychological experiment of memory and learning. (Milgram, 1973) However, when the subjects arrived they were told that the payment was simply for showing up and the money was there’s even if they didn’t choose to participate in the experiment.

There was a diverse range of participating men whose jobs ranged from postal clerks, high school teachers, salesmen and engineers. Educational levels also varied from those who had not completed school to those who had professional university degrees. (Milgram, 1963)

The subjects showed up to Yale University individually and at different times. The subject was met by two men, the experimenter and another subject. The experimenter was leading the experiment and the other subject an actor, acting as though he had also read the advertisement and wanted to participate in the experiment as well.
The two subjects (the real subject and the con-subject) drew a slip of paper each which indicated who was going to be a ‘teacher’ and who was going to be a ‘learner’. This was rigged because both slips of paper said teacher.
The ‘learner’ was then strapped to a chair with electrodes attached. The teacher was then seated in another room in front of the shock generator, unable to see the ‘learner’.
The ‘learner’ and the experimenter knew that the electric shocks were not real. But for the teacher, they were extremely realistic because he thought that he was actually administrating shocks and inflicting pain onto another human. The situation was purposefully made to appear terrifyingly realistic for these participants.

The teacher was commanded to administrate an electric shock every time the ‘learner’ made an error to a question being asked. The electric volts began at 15 and went up in 15-volt intervals up to 450 volts. (Milgram, 1963)

When the electric shocks were being ‘executed’ there was a voice recording of the ‘learner’ screaming, asking the teacher to stop shocking him because he had heart problems and was in a lot of pain. As the volts got higher and more dangerous, the pleads got louder and at the point of 345 volts there was silence of the ‘learner’. Most participants were worried about the state of the ‘learner’ but it was most likely that with a bit of encouragement by the experimenter, the teacher would continue to shock the ‘learner’ knowing he was in pain. If the subject resisted to administrate shocks, the experimenter urged him on with these statements (Milgram, 1963):
1. Please continue
2. The experiment requires that you continue
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue
4. You have no other choice, you must go on
Below is a table of the final results, indicating when the men stopped shocking the ‘learner’. As you can see the majority of people (26) kept shocking until the point of death.
Milgram breached many ethical boundaries with his experiment on obedience. He used deception on the participants to make them believe that they were shocking and harming a real person.
Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations during this experiment that could have caused them psychological harm.
Many of the participants were visibly distressed, showing signs of tension. It was observed that many participants were trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands and three participants had uncontrollable seizures. Milgram argued that these effects were only short term. Once the participants were debriefed and saw that the ‘learner’ was not harmed, their stress levels declined.
Many people think that Milgram didn’t give the participants a right to withdrawal because of the four verbal statements the experimenter gave. Milgram disagreed, stating that his actions were necessary and although the withdrawal was made difficult, it was still possible because 35% of participants had chosen to do so (Milgram, 1963).
Milgram’s experiment is known for being an atrocity as well as being one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology. It proves that someone would hurt a fellow human rather than disobey an authority figure. A psychological study like this would never be allowed in most countries today. Milgram's contributions to psychology and society were remarkably numerous and he has made many astonishing contributions to the psychological society.
Reference list: APA (6th
edition)

Milgram, S.
(1963). Behavioral Study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378. doi:10.1037/h0040525

This journal written by Stanley Milgram had a lot of facts and information useful for this task. This article had the information of the general procedure and method including the information of the subjects and the results of the experiment. This pdf also had data tables and I used one of them in my article.

Milgram, S. (1973). The perils of obedience. Harper’s, 247(1483), 1973.

This book explained a lot about why Milgram set up the experiment he did, it was because of the Germans slaughtering innocent people. This article also helped me gain a lot of knowledge and background information that I needed to write this article.

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human relations, 18(1), 57-76.

Information on the methodology of the experiment and why Stanley Milgram decided to do this experiment.

Image References:

Photo of Stanley Milgram: (2017). August 15: The Shocking Stanley Milgram. Jewish currents, activist politics and art. Retrieved 19 February 2017, from:
http://jewishcurrents.org/august-15-the-shocking-stanley-milgram/

Table in article found: Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral Study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378. doi:10.1037/h0040525