What Are the Results of the Milgram Experiment?

¶ … Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments in the field of social psychology that tested how far random individuals were willing to be "obedient" if given orders by a person in "authority." The test was inspired by the stories of otherwise ordinary citizens on Nazi-Germany taking part in the war crimes that, in normal circumstances, one would typically shun. Milgram was testing the hypothesis that man will do something even if it goes against conscience if only he can justify it to himself by saying that he was "following orders."

The experiment was conducted in the following manner: two persons were involved in conducting the experiment -- but one of them was pretending to be a random volunteer, while the other was dressed as a scientist and was "in charge" of the experiment. The third person involved was the actual subject of the experiment. This was a random individual who really did volunteer to be part of the exercise -- not knowing that he was actually the one being tested in Milgram's "Behavior Study of Obedience." The Experimenter would be the scientist (the authority), the Teacher would be the subject (the volunteer taking orders from the Experimenter), and the Learner would be the other person pretending to be a random subject but actually being "in on" the test. The Learner and the Teacher drew "slips" of paper to see who got which role, but the slips always both said "Teacher" and the actor would pretend his said "Learner" to guarantee that the subject would always be put in the role of the one taking orders.

In one particular experiment during this series, Milgram had his actor tell the "Teacher" that he had a heart condition, which would later make the Teacher even more nervous about taking part in the experiment (Milgram, 1963, p. 371).

The experiment, as it was told to the Teacher, was that he and the Learner would be separated by a wall and could only communicate through audio. The Teacher would ask the Learner a series of questions. If the Learner answered incorrectly he was given an electric shock. With each wrong answer the shocks increased in voltage -- or so the Teacher was told. In actuality, the actor was only pretending to be shocked. Once voltage increased, the Learner would hit the wall repeatedly, demand to be let out, and cry in pain. If the Teacher expressed a desire to quit the experiment, the Experimenter would say insist that the Teacher "continue," saying that he had no choice but to "go on" (Milgram, 1963, p. 372).

The results showed that of the 40 persons tested, 65% of them gave the Learner the 450-volt shock (the highest) in spite of protests from the Learner. This finding was surprising, considering that when Milgram polled teachers and students at Yale University, all of them indicated that only a small percentage would give the maximum voltage shock. Milgram (1974) stated later when he revisited the topic that "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." Thus, Milgram showed that while obedience could be a virtue, it could also "turn to vice, being misapplied" as the famous playwright noted (Shakespeare, 1974, p. 331). That is, obeying one who gave an unjust command would not be virtuous but rather vicious. Obedience is only a virtue when the command is not immoral. More than half of the participants of the study failed to make this distinction in the experiment -- a fact that indicates there is something fundamentally unhealthy in 20th century society. The question that remains is: why did so few people fail to stand up to the Experimenter and demand the test stop for the sake of the Learner's safety?

The concept situation applies to the study's results in the sense that the Teacher is placed in a context that requires him to obey orders to "harm" another person. The Teacher believes that the scientist has the authority to "harm" the other person, and that this authority overrides whatever moral authority the Teacher has to stop the experiment.

The Milgram Experiment has been conducted many times around the world. Blass (2004) has shown that results vary according to cultures and ethnicities; however, there is consistency in the finding that people no matter what the society will "obey" even if internally they think it is wrong. Thus, I do not believe that the results would differ very greatly from one culture or ethnicity to another, nor do I believe gender would play much of a factor in effecting a different outcome.

The results of the study are very important for our society because they indicate that we can all become tools of an authoritative, totalitarian regime, even if it contradicts our initial sense of what it means to be good. It shows persons are willing to be hurtful so long as they think they won't be held responsible for the results. At one point in the experiment of Milgram, one man objects by saying, "Are you gonna take responsibility if that man dies?" And the Experimenter says, "I'm responsible, please go on." While this idea might make it easier for an individual to participate in a crime against humanity, it does nothing to absolve him: he is still guilty of following a wicked command.

In this sense, it is important for every society to teach its citizens that one should respect authority and be obedient unless the authority orders one to do something that is "sinful" or immoral. The problem with today's society is that it does not teach this lesson. Its schools do not even teach what morality is with any consistency. Few people seem to understand what it means to be a good person. Even killing people has lost its horror, as every week we see more police officers (ordinary people when not "on duty") perpetrating horrific acts of violence on individuals, imagining that they have been given the mandate to be violent. Thus, contemporary society finds itself in the unbecoming position of having to remind itself of what is acceptable and what is not. However, as today's authorities are more militarized than ever before, this experiment's findings may not seem as relevant -- especially when one considers that "force" or the "threat of force" may serve as ample motive to encourage an ordinary person to act abominably towards another individual.