Why Milgram Is Wrong

In the last 40 years or so, the business world has earned a bad reputation. Companies like Enron and individuals like Bernie Madoff, who perpetuated the stigma that profitable businesses must operate based on the shareholder strategy, have ruined public perception of an entire industry. What is often forgotten is that these companies and individuals are the minority. Every individual can stomp his feet and stand on his soap box and say how he would’ve acted differently if he was placed in the aforementioned individuals’ shoes, but that cannot be determined. Conversely, the Milgram experiment, however controversial, proves that a vast majority of people, in the right circumstances, will physically harm another person based on the orders of a superior. It is hard to refute scientific evidence and statistics. To further this, outside observers constantly iterate that regardless of how morally superior one feels outside of the experiment, you, too would succumb under the pressure. To that I’d say: I probably would. However, in the midst of
all the horrible things that the scientific world continues to tell humanity about itself, I refuse to believe that this concept is innate. Somewhere along the line something went wrong. Collectively we all learned that our own benefit and well-being is more valuable than that of another human being. Milgram may have surveyed thousands of people over an extensive period of time, but people are more than statistics. Each individual is a complex, emotional, intelligent being. So much so that science has failed at creating artificial intelligence comparable to the most unintelligible human being’s. Technology may be over-running our lives, but we still must cling to our humanity. Part of what makes humanity so amazing is the ability for us to learn from our mistakes. Let Milgram’s experiment be one of these mistakes. It should serve as a lesson and a wakeup call to society that as much as we say we have evolved over the years, we are continuing to regress morally.
Blindly following the orders of an individual has never lead to intelligent outcomes in business or history. Still, we succumb to the pressures of those in power because we are taught to obey authority out of respect. There has to be a happy medium. A certain level of respect can be met with a healthy level of questioning. In business this has to come from the core of an organization’s culture. Employees must be able to speak their minds without fear of retribution in the form of losing their jobs. This also has to be approached delicately and at appropriate times. Challenging authority is healthy, but can also cause a lack of trust in leadership if not channeled correctly.
Furthermore, as an employee and an individual we cannot confine ourselves to the role that we play within an organization. Human beings are complex, multi-faceted individuals. When we attempt to compartmentalize ourselves, we lose facets of our identities and moral compasses. This is a tactic utilized in militaries across the globe. The articles touch upon this concept briefly. This compartmentalization and wholehearted embrace of a role are part of what allows individuals to separate who they are from their career. While in circumstances this is necessary, for the average employee it is completely overzealous. Even in the Milgram experiment and those that replicated it, the subjects were so quick to conform to the expectations of the roles they had just moments before entered into.
Additionally, there is a level of personal accountability that we must hold ourselves to.
Take for example college entrance exams. If you ask someone how they scored, before they tell you their score they will give you an entire back story. It usually details a long list of things that detracted from their score that clearly were out of the individual’s control. The same principle rang true in the Milgram experiment. The individuals in were more obliged to continue to administer shocks to the ‘learners’ if the experimenter seemed to take responsibility for their suffering. This is a concept that the business world struggles with because how does one hold a single individual accountable for the actions of an entire corporation? On the contrary, what actions can be taken to hold a corporation accountable rather than just its agents? In order to restore the credibility and reputation of businesses, these choices need to be made
clear.