Milgram

• Milgram's experiment


  Focused on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience
• Milgram (1963) examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials
• Milgram's question


  Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?
• Milgram wanted to investigate whether Germans were particularly obedient to authority figures, as this was a common explanation for the Nazi killings in World War II
• Milgram's experiment procedure


  1. Participant was paired with a confederate 'learner'

  2. Participant was the 'teacher' and administered shocks to the 'learner'

  3. Shocks were not real, but the participant believed they were
• Milgram's agency theory


  People have two states of behavior: autonomous state (direct their own actions) and agentic state (allow others to direct their actions and pass off responsibility)
• Factors for agentic state

  • Person giving orders is perceived as qualified and legitimate
  • Person being ordered can believe authority will accept responsibility
• When participants were reminded of their own responsibility, almost none were prepared to obey
• Many participants who were refusing to go on did so if the experimenter said he would take responsibility
• Variations of Milgram's experiment

  • Uniform (experimenter in lab coat vs ordinary clothes)
  • Change of location (prestigious university vs ordinary office)
  • Two teacher condition (participant could instruct assistant)
  • Touch proximity condition (participant had to force learner's hand onto shock plate)
  • Social support condition (confederates modeled defiance)
  • Absent experimenter condition (experimenter gave instructions by phone)
• Factors that reduced obedience

  • Lack of experimenter's uniform and prestige of location
  • Increased personal responsibility and proximity to learner
  • Presence of others modeling defiance
  • Experimenter's physical absence
• On 150 volts, it permitted the real participant also to resist authority
• Other participants (confederates)


  • Confederate 1 stopped at 150 volts
  • Confederate 2 stopped at 210 volts
• Disobedience of confederates


  Provided social proof that it was acceptable to disobey
• Modeling of defiance by confederates

  Lowered obedience to only 10% compared to 65% without such social support
• The presence of others who are seen to disobey the authority figure reduces the level of obedience to 10%
• Absent Experimenter Condition


  It is easier to resist the orders from an authority figure if they are not close by
• When the experimenter instructed and prompted the teacher by telephone from another room

  Obedience fell to 20.5%
• Many participants cheated and missed out on shocks or gave less voltage than ordered by the experimenter
• Proximity of authority figures

  Affects obedience
• The physical absence of the authority figure enabled participants to act more freely on their own moral inclinations rather than the experimenter's commands
• Milgram presented the obedience studies as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an "empirically grounded scientist" compared to philosophers
• Milgram claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates
• Recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram's account of standardizing the procedure was misleading
• Milgram published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing, and said these were delivered uniformly in a firm but polite tone
• Analyzing audiotapes, Gibson (2013) found considerable variation from the published protocol - the prods differed across trials
• The point is not that Milgram did poor science, but that the archival materials reveal the limitations of the textbook account of his "standardized" procedure
• The qualitative data like participant feedback, Milgram's notes, and researchers' actions provide a fuller, messier picture than the obedience studies' "official" story
• For psychology students, this shows how scientific reporting can polish findings in a way that strays from the less tidy reality
• Perry's (2013) archival research revealed another discrepancy between Milgram's published account and the actual events
• Milgram claimed standardized prods were used when participants resisted, but Perry's audiotape analysis showed the experimenter often improvised more coercive prods beyond the supposed script
• This off-script prodding varied between experiments and participants, and was especially prevalent with female participants where no gender obedience difference was found - suggesting the improvisation influenced results
• Gibson (2013) and Russell (2009) corroborated the experimenter's departures from the supposed fixed prods
• Prods were often combined or modified rather than used verbatim as published
• Russell speculated the improvisation aimed to achieve outcomes the experimenter believed Milgram wanted
• Milgram seemed to tacitly approve of the deviations by not correcting them when observing
• This raises significant issues around experimenter bias influencing results, lack of standardization compromising validity, and ethical problems with Milgram misrepresenting procedures
• Experimental realism


  Participants might not have believed the experimental set-up they found themselves in and knew the learner wasn't receiving electric shocks
• It's more truthful to say that only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real, and of those two-thirds disobeyed the experimenter
• The participants in Milgram's study were all male