Milgram, Zimbardo, and the My Lai Massacre Explained
This paper examines the My Lai Massacre of March 1968, in which U.S. troops under Lieutenant William Calley killed approximately five hundred unarmed Vietnamese civilians, through the lens of two landmark psychological experiments. Drawing on Stanley Milgram's obedience studies and Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, the paper argues that the massacre was not the product of a few aberrant individuals but rather the result of a command structure that normalized violence and the psychological deterioration produced by prolonged guerrilla warfare. The "few bad apples" explanation is challenged, and a more systemic account of how ordinary people commit atrocities under conditions of authority and social pressure is advanced.
- Introduction: The 'Few Bad Apples' Thesis: Challenges the 'few bad apples' explanation for U.S. war crimes
- The My Lai Massacre: Factual account of the 1968 massacre and its aftermath
- Milgram's Obedience Experiment and My Lai: Milgram's findings applied to soldiers following orders
- The Limits of Milgram: Where Obedience Theory Falls Short: Obedience theory cannot explain body mutilation at My Lai
- Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment: Deindividuation and moral collapse in a simulated prison
- The Psychology of Guerrilla Warfare at My Lai: How combat conditions eroded soldiers' moral inhibitions
- Conclusion: Both frameworks together explain ordinary soldiers becoming killers
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper builds its argument incrementally, first introducing Milgram's framework, then identifying its limits, and finally supplementing it with Zimbardo — a logical, layered analytical structure.
- Specific testimony and direct quotations from soldiers and commanders ground the psychological theory in concrete historical evidence, making the argument persuasive rather than purely abstract.
- The thesis is clear and falsifiable: the paper does not simply say "obedience explains My Lai" but argues that two complementary psychological frameworks together account for what happened.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates the technique of applying multiple theoretical lenses to a single historical event. Rather than forcing one framework to do all the explanatory work, the writer identifies the explanatory gap left by Milgram's theory and explicitly introduces Zimbardo's concept of deindividuation to fill it. This "theory + limitation + supplementary theory" move is a strong model for undergraduate analytical writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad historical context and a clearly stated thesis challenging the "few bad apples" explanation. It then presents the factual record of My Lai before introducing Milgram's experiment and applying it to the massacre. A transitional paragraph honestly acknowledges where Milgram's theory is insufficient, which sets up the introduction of Zimbardo's prison experiment. The final body section applies Zimbardo's deindividuation concept to the psychological conditions of guerrilla warfare. The conclusion ties both frameworks together in a brief synthesis.
Introduction: The 'Few Bad Apples' Thesis
In the twentieth century, the United States military was engaged in numerous wars, and the U.S. government depicted these conflicts as forces of good, freedom, and morality fighting against forces of evil, tyranny, and barbarism. The realities of American military behavior in these wars, however, did not always justify such a simplistic characterization. American troops at times committed war crimes and atrocities, such as the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and the sexualized torture of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When these crimes were revealed to the public, American civilian and military leaders tried to minimize their significance by suggesting that what happened at My Lai and Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents committed by a "few bad apples."
The "few bad apples" thesis, however, does not fully explain either the My Lai or the Abu Ghraib scandals, since there were many other similar incidents that took place in both Vietnam and Iraq. By analyzing the case of the My Lai Massacre, this paper argues that such incidents occur because of a command structure that normalizes violent practices and because of the psychological effects of continuous warfare.
The My Lai Massacre
My Lai was a village in the Son My area of Vietnam where U.S. troops, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley, murdered approximately five hundred Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968. Among those killed were unarmed men, women, children, and the elderly. According to testimony by Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer, one soldier shot dead two boys whom Haeberle believed were about five years of age. Other accounts described children having their throats cut and their bodies mutilated, while one soldier admitted during an interview a year later that he had killed "ten or fifteen men, women, and children" at My Lai ("My Lai Massacre").
Among all the participants in the massacre, only Lieutenant Calley was charged and sentenced to life in prison, though he was released three years later.
Milgram's Obedience Experiment and My Lai
When the massacre was disclosed to the public, many people were outraged and asked why U.S. soldiers had behaved in that manner. To understand the My Lai Massacre, we must first look at an experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram, who summarized his findings in Harper's in 1973. Milgram recruited a group of volunteers and assigned them the role of "teacher," instructing them to ask questions of a "learner" sitting in a separate room. The "learner" was in reality an actor who simulated responses. If the "learner" gave a wrong answer, the "teacher" was instructed to administer an electric shock, increasing the voltage with each subsequent wrong answer. At a certain point, participants refused to continue, but most resumed after being assured by the experimenter — an authority figure — that it was acceptable to do so (Behrens and Rosen 692).
While experts at the time predicted that most participants would not continue shocking victims beyond 150 volts, Milgram stated that all such "predictions were unequivocally wrong. Both college students at Yale and adults from the general population in New Haven were fully obedient roughly 60% of the time" (695). Milgram concluded that ordinary people are willing to participate in immoral acts when they believe they are not personally responsible for their actions, and that assurances from an authority figure can normalize morally questionable behavior.
This was certainly the case at My Lai. U.S. troops, including Lieutenant Calley, believed they were simply following orders. Seymour Hersh, the reporter who uncovered the massacre, said that Calley was "as much a victim as the people he shot." Calley himself stated: "Nobody in the military system ever described them [Vietnamese villagers at My Lai] as anything other than Communist" ("My Lai Massacre"). Calley and his troops believed they had been given a clear directive by their superiors.
Conclusion
The My Lai Massacre was an atrocity that shocked Americans. Many Americans believed that U.S. soldiers were incapable of carrying out such horrific crimes. But as the experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo suggest, even ordinary people may become capable of evil under certain circumstances. American soldiers at My Lai were ordinary people. However, the command structure that indirectly normalized the killing of Vietnamese civilians, combined with the overall psychological effects of guerrilla warfare, turned American troops at My Lai into perpetrators of mass atrocity — albeit temporarily.
Works Cited
Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 11th ed. Boston: Longman-Pearson, 2011. Print.
"My Lai Massacre." History Learning Site, n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2011. <
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