research method used in milgram experiment

Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, carried out one of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology.

He conducted an experiment focusing 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. Their defense often was based on obedience  – that they were just following orders from their superiors.

The experiments began in July 1961, a year after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question:

Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” (Milgram, 1974).

Milgram (1963) 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 selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University.

The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher.’  The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant).

The learner (a confederate called Mr. Wallace) was taken into a room and had electrodes attached to his arms, and the teacher and researcher went into a room next door that contained an electric shock generator and a row of switches marked from 15 volts (Slight Shock) to 375 volts (Danger: Severe Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).

The shocks in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were not real. The “learners” were actors who were part of the experiment and did not actually receive any shocks.

However, the “teachers” (the real participants of the study) believed the shocks were real, which was crucial for the experiment to measure obedience to authority figures even when it involved causing harm to others.

Milgram’s Experiment (1963)

Milgram (1963) was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person.

Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.

Volunteers were recruited for a controlled experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). 

Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up.

At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).

They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed, and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).

Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used – one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.

The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes.

After he has learned a list of word pairs given to him to learn, the “teacher” tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.

The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).

The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.

There were four prods, and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.

Prod 1 : Please continue. Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue. Prod 3 : It is absolutely essential that you continue. Prod 4 : You have no other choice but to continue.

These prods were to be used in order, and begun afresh for each new attempt at defiance (Milgram, 1974, p. 21). The experimenter also had two special prods available. These could be used as required by the situation:

• Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on’ (ibid.)
• ‘Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly. So please go on’ (ibid., p. 22).

65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e., teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts.

Milgram did more than one experiment – he carried out 18 variations of his study.  All he did was alter the situation (IV) to see how this affected obedience (DV).

Conclusion 

The individual explanation for the behavior of the participants would be that it was something about them as people that caused them to obey, but a more realistic explanation is that the situation they were in influenced them and caused them to behave in the way that they did.

Some aspects of the situation that may have influenced their behavior include the formality of the location, the behavior of the experimenter, and the fact that it was an experiment for which they had volunteered and been paid.

Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being.  Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up.

People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and/or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school, and workplace.

Milgram summed up in the article “The Perils of Obedience” (Milgram 1974), writing:

“The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

Milgram’s Agency Theory

Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by suggesting that people have two states of behavior when they are in a social situation:

• The autonomous state – people direct their own actions, and they take responsibility for the results of those actions.
• The agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.

Milgram suggested that two things must be in place for a person to enter the agentic state:

• The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to direct other people’s behavior. That is, they are seen as legitimate.
• The person being ordered about is able to believe that the authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

According to Milgram, when in this agentic state, the participant in the obedience studies “defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher status. In this condition the individual no longer views himself as responsible for his own actions but defines himself as an instrument for carrying out the wishes of others” (Milgram, 1974, p. 134).

Agency theory says that people will obey an authority when they believe that the authority will take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is supported by some aspects of Milgram’s evidence.

For example, when participants were reminded that they had responsibility for their own actions, almost none of them were prepared to obey.

In contrast, many participants who were refusing to go on did so if the experimenter said that he would take responsibility.

According to Milgram (1974, p. 188):

“The behavior revealed in the experiments reported here is normal human behavior but revealed under conditions that show with particular clarity the danger to human survival inherent in our make-up.

And what is it we have seen? Not aggression, for there is no anger, vindictiveness, or hatred in those who shocked the victim….

Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures.”

Milgram Experiment Variations

The Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby Milgram (1965) varied the basic procedure (changed the IV).  By doing this Milgram could identify which factors affected obedience (the DV).

Obedience was measured by how many participants shocked to the maximum 450 volts (65% in the original study). Stanley Milgram conducted a total of 23 variations (also called conditions or experiments) of his original obedience study:

In total, 636 participants were tested in 18 variation studies conducted between 1961 and 1962 at Yale University.

In the original baseline study – the experimenter wore a gray lab coat to symbolize his authority (a kind of uniform).

The lab coat worn by the experimenter in the original study served as a crucial symbol of scientific authority that increased obedience. The lab coat conveyed expertise and legitimacy, making participants see the experimenter as more credible and trustworthy.

Milgram carried out a variation in which the experimenter was called away because of a phone call right at the start of the procedure.

The role of the experimenter was then taken over by an ‘ordinary member of the public’ ( a confederate) in everyday clothes rather than a lab coat. The obedience level dropped to 20%.

Change of Location:  The Mountain View Facility Study (1963, unpublished)

Milgram conducted this variation in a set of offices in a rundown building, claiming it was associated with “Research Associates of Bridgeport” rather than Yale.

The lab’s ordinary appearance was designed to test if Yale’s prestige encouraged obedience. Participants were led to believe that a private research firm experimented.

In this non-university setting, obedience rates dropped to 47.5% compared to 65% in the original Yale experiments. This suggests that the status of location affects obedience.

Private research firms are viewed as less prestigious than certain universities, which affects behavior. It is easier under these conditions to abandon the belief in the experimenter’s essential decency.

The impressive university setting reinforced the experimenter’s authority and conveyed an implicit approval of the research.

Milgram filmed this variation for his documentary Obedience , but did not publish the results in his academic papers. The study only came to wider light when archival materials, including his notes, films, and data, were studied by later researchers like Perry (2013) in the decades after Milgram’s death.

Two Teacher Condition

When participants could instruct an assistant (confederate) to press the switches, 92.5% shocked to the maximum of 450 volts.

Allowing the participant to instruct an assistant to press the shock switches diffused personal responsibility and likely reduced perceptions of causing direct harm.

By attributing the actions to the assistant rather than themselves, participants could more easily justify shocking to the maximum 450 volts, reflected in the 92.5% obedience rate.

When there is less personal responsibility, obedience increases. This relates to Milgram’s Agency Theory.

Touch Proximity Condition

The teacher had to force the learner’s hand down onto a shock plate when the learner refused to participate after 150 volts. Obedience fell to 30%.

Forcing the learner’s hand onto the shock plate after 150 volts physically connected the teacher to the consequences of their actions. This direct tactile feedback increased the teacher’s personal responsibility.

No longer shielded from the learner’s reactions, the proximity enabled participants to more clearly perceive the harm they were causing, reducing obedience to 30%. Physical distance and indirect actions in the original setup made it easier to rationalize obeying the experimenter.

The participant is no longer buffered/protected from seeing the consequences of their actions.

Social Support Condition

When the two confederates set an example of defiance by refusing to continue the shocks, especially early on at 150 volts, it permitted the real participant also to resist authority.

Two other participants (confederates) were also teachers but refused to obey. Confederate 1 stopped at 150 volts, and Confederate 2 stopped at 210 volts.

Their disobedience provided social proof that it was acceptable to disobey. This modeling of defiance lowered obedience to only 10% compared to 65% without such social support. It demonstrated that social modeling can validate challenging authority.

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. The 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. This highlighted the role of an authority’s direct presence in influencing behavior.

A key reason the obedience studies fascinate people is Milgram presented them as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an “empirically grounded scientist” compared to philosophers. He claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates.

However, recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram’s account of standardizing the procedure was misleading. For example, he published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing. Milgram 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.

Critical Evaluation

Inaccurate description of the prod methodology:.

A key reason the obedience studies fascinate people is Milgram (1974) presented them as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an “empirically grounded scientist” compared to philosophers. He claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates.

However, recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram’s account of standardizing the procedure was misleading. For example, he published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing. Milgram said these were delivered uniformly in a firm but polite tone (Gibson, 2013; Perry, 2013; Russell, 2010).

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.

Milgram’s experiment lacked external validity:

The Milgram studies were conducted in laboratory-type conditions, and we must ask if this tells us much about real-life situations.

We obey in a variety of real-life situations that are far more subtle than instructions to give people electric shocks, and it would be interesting to see what factors operate in everyday obedience. The sort of situation Milgram investigated would be more suited to a military context.

Orne and Holland (1968) accused Milgram’s study of lacking ‘experimental realism,”’ i.e.,” 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,” observes Perry (p. 139).

Milgram’s sample was biased:

• The participants in Milgram’s study were all male. Do the findings transfer to females?
• Milgram’s study cannot be seen as representative of the American population as his sample was self-selected. This is because they became participants only by electing to respond to a newspaper advertisement (selecting themselves).
• They may also have a typical “volunteer personality” – not all the newspaper readers responded so perhaps it takes this personality type to do so.

Yet a total of 636 participants were tested in 18 separate experiments across the New Haven area, which was seen as being reasonably representative of a typical American town.

Milgram’s findings have been replicated in a variety of cultures and most lead to the same conclusions as Milgram’s original study and in some cases see higher obedience rates.

However, Smith and Bond (1998) point out that with the exception of Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978), the majority of these studies have been conducted in industrialized Western cultures, and we should be cautious before we conclude that a universal trait of social behavior has been identified.

Selective reporting of experimental findings:

Perry (2013) found Milgram omitted findings from some obedience experiments he conducted, reporting only results supporting his conclusions. A key omission was the Relationship condition (conducted in 1962 but unpublished), where participant pairs were relatives or close acquaintances.

When the learner protested being shocked, most teachers disobeyed, contradicting Milgram’s emphasis on obedience to authority.

Perry argued Milgram likely did not publish this 85% disobedience rate because it undermined his narrative and would be difficult to defend ethically since the teacher and learner knew each other closely.

Milgram’s selective reporting biased interpretations of his findings. His failure to publish all his experiments raises issues around researchers’ ethical obligation to completely and responsibly report their results, not just those fitting their expectations.

Unreported analysis of participants’ skepticism and its impact on their behavior:

Perry (2013) found archival evidence that many participants expressed doubt about the experiment’s setup, impacting their behavior. This supports Orne and Holland’s (1968) criticism that Milgram overlooked participants’ perceptions.

Incongruities like apparent danger, but an unconcerned experimenter likely cued participants that no real harm would occur. Trust in Yale’s ethics reinforced this. Yet Milgram did not publish his assistant’s analysis showing participant skepticism correlated with disobedience rates and varied by condition.

Obedient participants were more skeptical that the learner was harmed. This selective reporting biased interpretations. Additional unreported findings further challenge Milgram’s conclusions.

This highlights issues around thoroughly and responsibly reporting all results, not just those fitting expectations. It shows how archival evidence makes Milgram’s study a contentious classic with questionable methods and conclusions.

Ethical Issues

What are the potential ethical concerns associated with Milgram’s research on obedience?

While not a “contribution to psychology” in the traditional sense, Milgram’s obedience experiments sparked significant debate about the ethics of psychological research.

Baumrind (1964) criticized the ethics of Milgram’s research as participants were prevented from giving their informed consent to take part in the study. 

Participants assumed the experiment was benign and expected to be treated with dignity.

As a result of studies like Milgram’s, the APA and BPS now require researchers to give participants more information before they agree to take part in a study.

The participants actually believed they were shocking a real person and were unaware the learner was a confederate of Milgram’s.

However, Milgram argued that “illusion is used when necessary in order to set the stage for the revelation of certain difficult-to-get-at-truths.”

Milgram also interviewed participants afterward to find out the effect of the deception. Apparently, 83.7% said that they were “glad to be in the experiment,” and 1.3% said that they wished they had not been involved.

Protection of participants 

Participants were exposed to extremely stressful situations that may have the potential to cause psychological harm. Many of the participants were visibly distressed (Baumrind, 1964).

Signs of tension included trembling, sweating, stuttering, laughing nervously, biting lips and digging fingernails into palms of hands. Three participants had uncontrollable seizures, and many pleaded to be allowed to stop the experiment.

Milgram described a businessman reduced to a “twitching stuttering wreck” (1963, p. 377),

In his defense, Milgram argued that these effects were only short-term. Once the participants were debriefed (and could see the confederate was OK), their stress levels decreased.

“At no point,” Milgram (1964) stated, “were subjects exposed to danger and at no point did they run the risk of injurious effects resulting from participation” (p. 849).

To defend himself against criticisms about the ethics of his obedience research, Milgram cited follow-up survey data showing that 84% of participants said they were glad they had taken part in the study.

Milgram used this to claim that the study caused no serious or lasting harm, since most participants retrospectively did not regret their involvement.

Yet archival accounts show many participants endured lasting distress, even trauma, refuting Milgram’s insistence the study caused only fleeting “excitement.” By not debriefing all, Milgram misled participants about the true risks involved (Perry, 2013).

However, Milgram did debrief the participants fully after the experiment and also followed up after a period of time to ensure that they came to no harm.

Milgram debriefed all his participants straight after the experiment and disclosed the true nature of the experiment.

Participants were assured that their behavior was common, and Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found no signs of any long-term psychological harm.

The majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were pleased that they had participated, and 74% had learned something of personal importance.

Perry’s (2013) archival research found Milgram misrepresented debriefing – around 600 participants were not properly debriefed soon after the study, contrary to his claims. Many only learned no real shocks occurred when reading a mailed study report months later, which some may have not received.

Milgram likely misreported debriefing details to protect his credibility and enable future obedience research. This raises issues around properly informing and debriefing participants that connect to APA ethics codes developed partly in response to Milgram’s study.

Right to Withdrawal 

The BPS states that researchers should make it plain to participants that they are free to withdraw at any time (regardless of payment).

When expressing doubts, the experimenter assured them all was well. Trusting Yale scientists, many took the experimenter at his word that “no permanent tissue damage” would occur, and continued administering shocks despite reservations.

Did Milgram give participants an opportunity to withdraw? The experimenter gave four verbal prods which mostly discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:

• Please continue.
• The experiment requires that you continue.
• It is absolutely essential that you continue.
• You have no other choice, you must go on.

Milgram argued that they were justified as the study was about obedience, so orders were necessary.

Milgram pointed out that although the right to withdraw was made partially difficult, it was possible as 35% of participants had chosen to withdraw.

Replications

Direct replications have not been possible due to current ethical standards . However, several researchers have conducted partial replications and variations that aim to reproduce some aspects of Milgram’s methods ethically.

One important replication was conducted by Jerry Burger in 2009. Burger’s partial replication included several safeguards to protect participant welfare, such as screening out high-risk individuals, repeatedly reminding participants they could withdraw, and stopping at the 150-volt shock level. This was the point where Milgram’s participants first heard the learner’s protests.

As 79% of Milgram’s participants who went past 150 volts continued to the maximum 450 volts, Burger (2009) argued that 150 volts provided a reasonable estimate for obedience levels. He found 70% of participants continued to 150 volts, compared to 82.5% in Milgram’s comparable condition.

Another replication by Thomas Blass (1999) examined whether obedience rates had declined over time due to greater public awareness of the experiments. Blass correlated obedience rates from replication studies between 1963 and 1985 and found no relationship between year and obedience level. He concluded that obedience rates have not systematically changed, providing evidence against the idea of “enlightenment effects”.

Some variations have explored the role of gender. Milgram found equal rates of obedience for male and female participants. Reviews have found most replications also show no gender difference, with a couple of exceptions (Blass, 1999). For example, Kilham and Mann (1974) found lower obedience in female participants.

Partial replications have also examined situational factors. Having another person model defiance reduced obedience compared to a solo participant in one study, but did not eliminate it (Burger, 2009). The authority figure’s perceived expertise seems to be an influential factor (Blass, 1999). Replications have supported Milgram’s observation that stepwise increases in demands promote obedience.

Personality factors have been studied as well. Traits like high empathy and desire for control correlate with some minor early hesitation, but do not greatly impact eventual obedience levels (Burger, 2009). Authoritarian tendencies may contribute to obedience (Elms, 2009).

In sum, the partial replications confirm Milgram’s degree of obedience. Though ethical constraints prevent full reproductions, the key elements of his procedure seem to consistently elicit high levels of compliance across studies, samples, and eras. The replications continue to highlight the power of situational pressures to yield obedience.

Milgram (1963) Audio Clips

Below you can also hear some of the audio clips taken from the video that was made of the experiment. Just click on the clips below.

Why was the Milgram experiment so controversial?

The Milgram experiment was controversial because it revealed people’s willingness to obey authority figures even when causing harm to others, raising ethical concerns about the psychological distress inflicted upon participants and the deception involved in the study.

Would Milgram’s experiment be allowed today?

Milgram’s experiment would likely not be allowed today in its original form, as it violates modern ethical guidelines for research involving human participants, particularly regarding informed consent, deception, and protection from psychological harm.

Did anyone refuse the Milgram experiment?

Yes, in the Milgram experiment, some participants refused to continue administering shocks, demonstrating individual variation in obedience to authority figures. In the original Milgram experiment, approximately 35% of participants refused to administer the highest shock level of 450 volts, while 65% obeyed and delivered the 450-volt shock.

How can Milgram’s study be applied to real life?

Milgram’s study can be applied to real life by demonstrating the potential for ordinary individuals to obey authority figures even when it involves causing harm, emphasizing the importance of questioning authority, ethical decision-making, and fostering critical thinking in societal contexts.

Were all participants in Milgram’s experiments male?

Yes, in the original Milgram experiment conducted in 1961, all participants were male, limiting the generalizability of the findings to women and diverse populations.

Why was the Milgram experiment unethical?

The Milgram experiment was considered unethical because participants were deceived about the true nature of the study and subjected to severe emotional distress. They believed they were causing harm to another person under the instruction of authority.

Additionally, participants were not given the right to withdraw freely and were subjected to intense pressure to continue. The psychological harm and lack of informed consent violates modern ethical guidelines for research.

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Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we now know about obedience to authority 1.  Journal of Applied Social Psychology ,  29 (5), 955-978.

Brannigan, A., Nicholson, I., & Cherry, F. (2015). Introduction to the special issue: Unplugging the Milgram machine.  Theory & Psychology ,  25 (5), 551-563.

Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64 , 1–11.

Elms, A. C. (2009). Obedience lite. American Psychologist, 64 (1), 32–36.

Gibson, S. (2013). Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis. British Journal of Social Psychology, 52, 290–309.

Gibson, S. (2017). Developing psychology’s archival sensibilities: Revisiting Milgram’s obedience’ experiments.  Qualitative Psychology ,  4 (1), 73.

Griggs, R. A., Blyler, J., & Jackson, S. L. (2020). Using research ethics as a springboard for teaching Milgram’s obedience study as a contentious classic.  Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology ,  6 (4), 350.

Haslam, S. A., & Reicher, S. D. (2018). A truth that does not always speak its name: How Hollander and Turowetz’s findings confirm and extend the engaged followership analysis of harm-doing in the Milgram paradigm. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 292–300.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., & Birney, M. E. (2016). Questioning authority: New perspectives on Milgram’s ‘obedience’ research and its implications for intergroup relations. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11 , 6–9.

Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Birney, M. E., Millard, K., & McDonald, R. (2015). ‘Happy to have been of service’: The Yale archive as a window into the engaged followership of participants in Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiment. British Journal of Social Psychology, 54 , 55–83.

Kaplan, D. E. (1996). The Stanley Milgram papers: A case study on appraisal of and access to confidential data files. American Archivist, 59 , 288–297.

Kaposi, D. (2022). The second wave of critical engagement with Stanley Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’experiments: What did we learn?.  Social and Personality Psychology Compass ,  16 (6), e12667.

Kilham, W., & Mann, L. (1974). Level of destructive obedience as a function of transmitter and executant roles in the Milgram obedience paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29 (5), 696–702.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience . Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 67, 371-378.

Milgram, S. (1964). Issues in the study of obedience: A reply to Baumrind. American Psychologist, 19 , 848–852.

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

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view . Harpercollins.

Miller, A. G. (2009). Reflections on” Replicating Milgram”(Burger, 2009), American Psychologis t, 64 (1):20-27

Nicholson, I. (2011). “Torture at Yale”: Experimental subjects, laboratory torment and the “rehabilitation” of Milgram’s “obedience to authority”. Theory & Psychology, 21 , 737–761.

Nicholson, I. (2015). The normalization of torment: Producing and managing anguish in Milgram’s “obedience” laboratory. Theory & Psychology, 25 , 639–656.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6 (4), 282-293.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. C. (1968). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6 , 282–293.

Perry, G. (2013). Behind the shock machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments . New York, NY: The New Press.

Reicher, S., Haslam, A., & Miller, A. (Eds.). (2014). Milgram at 50: Exploring the enduring relevance of psychology’s most famous studies [Special issue]. Journal of Social Issues, 70 (3), 393–602

Russell, N. (2014). Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority “relationship condition”: Some methodological and theoretical implications. Social Sciences, 3, 194–214

Shanab, M. E., & Yahya, K. A. (1978). A cross-cultural study of obedience. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society .

Smith, P. B., & Bond, M. H. (1998). Social psychology across cultures (2nd Edition) . Prentice Hall.

Further Reading

• The power of the situation: The impact of Milgram’s obedience studies on personality and social psychology
• Seeing is believing: The role of the film Obedience in shaping perceptions of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiments
• Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?

Learning Check

Which is true regarding the Milgram obedience study?

• The aim was to see how obedient people would be in a situation where following orders would mean causing harm to another person.
• Participants were under the impression they were part of a learning and memory experiment.
• The “learners” in the study were actual participants who volunteered to be shocked as part of the experiment.
• The “learner” was an actor who was in on the experiment and never actually received any real shocks.
• Although the participant could not see the “learner”, he was able to hear him clearly through the wall
• The study was directly influenced by Milgram’s observations of obedience patterns in post-war Europe.
• The experiment was designed to understand the psychological mechanisms behind war crimes committed during World War II.
• The Milgram study was universally accepted in the psychological community, and no ethical concerns were raised about its methodology.
• When Milgram’s experiment was repeated in a rundown office building in Bridgeport, the percentage of the participants who fully complied with the commands of the experimenter remained unchanged.
• The experimenter (authority figure) delivered verbal prods to encourage the teacher to continue, such as ‘Please continue’ or ‘Please go on’.
• Over 80% of participants went on to deliver the maximum level of shock.
• Milgram sent participants questionnaires after the study to assess the effects and found that most felt no remorse or guilt, so it was ethical.
• The aftermath of the study led to stricter ethical guidelines in psychological research.
• The study emphasized the role of situational factors over personality traits in determining obedience.

Answers : Items 3, 8, 9, and 11 are the false statements.

Short Answer Questions

• Briefly explain the results of the original Milgram experiments. What did these results prove?
• List one scenario on how an authority figure can abuse obedience principles.
• List one scenario on how an individual could use these principles to defend their fellow peers.
• In a hospital, you are very likely to obey a nurse. However, if you meet her outside the hospital, for example in a shop, you are much less likely to obey. Using your knowledge of how people resist pressure to obey, explain why you are less likely to obey the nurse outside the hospital.
• Describe the shock instructions the participant (teacher) was told to follow when the victim (learner) gave an incorrect answer.
• State the lowest voltage shock that was labeled on the shock generator.
• What would likely happen if Milgram’s experiment included a condition in which the participant (teacher) had to give a high-level electric shock for the first wrong answer?

Group Activity

Gather in groups of three or four to discuss answers to the short answer questions above.

For question 2, review the different scenarios you each came up with. Then brainstorm on how these situations could be flipped.

For question 2, discuss how an authority figure could instead empower those below them in the examples your groupmates provide.

For question 3, discuss how a peer could do harm by using the obedience principles in the scenarios your groupmates provide.

Essay Topic

• What’s the most important lesson of Milgram’s Obedience Experiments? Fully explain and defend your answer.
• Milgram selectively edited his film of the obedience experiments to emphasize obedient behavior and minimize footage of disobedience. What are the ethical implications of a researcher selectively presenting findings in a way that fits their expected conclusions?

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Milgram experiment

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• BCcampus Open Publishing - Ethics in Law Enforcement - The Milgram Experiment
• SimplyPsychology - Stanley Milgram Shock Experiment: Summary, Results, & Ethics
• University of California - College of Natural Resources - Milgrams Experiment on Obedience to Authority
• Open University - OpenLearn - Psychological research, obedience and ethics: 1 Milgram’s obedience study
• Social Science LibreTexts - The Milgram Experiment- The Power of Authority
• Verywell Mind - What was the Milgram Experiment?

Milgram experiment , controversial series of experiments examining obedience to authority conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram . In the experiment, an authority figure, the conductor of the experiment, would instruct a volunteer participant, labeled the “teacher,” to administer painful, even dangerous, electric shocks to the “learner,” who was actually an actor. Although the shocks were faked, the experiments are widely considered unethical today due to the lack of proper disclosure, informed consent, and subsequent debriefing related to the deception and trauma experienced by the teachers. Some of Milgram’s conclusions have been called into question. Nevertheless, the experiments and their results have been widely cited for their insight into how average people respond to authority.

Milgram conducted his experiments as an assistant professor at Yale University in the early 1960s. In 1961 he began to recruit men from New Haven , Connecticut , for participation in a study he claimed would be focused on memory and learning . The recruits were paid $4.50 at the beginning of the study and were generally between the ages of 20 and 50 and from a variety of employment backgrounds. When they volunteered, they were told that the experiment would test the effect of punishment on learning ability. In truth, the volunteers were the subjects of an experiment on obedience to authority. In all, about 780 people, only about 40 of them women, participated in the experiments, and Milgram published his results in 1963.

Volunteers were told that they would be randomly assigned either a “teacher” or “learner” role, with each teacher administering electric shocks to a learner in another room if the learner failed to answer questions correctly. In actuality, the random draw was fixed so that all the volunteer participants were assigned to the teacher role and the actors were assigned to the learner role. The teachers were then instructed in the electroshock “punishment” they would be administering, with 30 shock levels ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The different shock levels were labeled with descriptions of their effects, such as “Slight Shock,” “Intense Shock,” and “Danger: Severe Shock,” with the final label a grim “XXX.” Each teacher was given a 45-volt shock themselves so that they would better understand the punishment they believed the learner would be receiving. Teachers were then given a series of questions for the learner to answer, with each incorrect answer generally earning the learner a progressively stronger shock. The actor portraying the learner, who was seated out of sight of the teacher, had pre-recorded responses to these shocks that ranged from grunts of pain to screaming and pleading, claims of suffering a heart condition, and eventually dead silence. The experimenter, acting as an authority figure, would encourage the teachers to continue administering shocks, telling them with scripted responses that the experiment must continue despite the reactions of the learner. The infamous result of these experiments was that a disturbingly high number of the teachers were willing to proceed to the maximum voltage level, despite the pleas of the learner and the supposed danger of proceeding.

Milgram’s interest in the subject of authority, and his dark view of the results of his experiments, were deeply informed by his Jewish identity and the context of the Holocaust , which had occurred only a few years before. He had expected that Americans, known for their individualism , would differ from Germans in their willingness to obey authority when it might lead to harming others. Milgram and his students had predicted only 1–3% of participants would administer the maximum shock level. However, in his first official study, 26 of 40 male participants (65%) were convinced to do so and nearly 80% of teachers that continued to administer shocks after 150 volts—the point at which the learner was heard to scream—continued to the maximum of 450 volts. Teachers displayed a range of negative emotional responses to the experiment even as they continued to obey, sometimes pleading with the experimenters to stop the experiment while still participating in it. One teacher believed that he had killed the learner and was moved to tears when he eventually found out that he had not.

Milgram included several variants on the original design of the experiment. In one, the teachers were allowed to select their own voltage levels. In this case, only about 2.5% of participants used the maximum shock level, indicating that they were not inclined to do so without the prompting of an authority figure. In another, there were three teachers, two of whom were not test subjects, but instead had been instructed to protest against the shocks. The existence of peers protesting the experiment made the volunteer teachers less likely to obey. Teachers were also less likely to obey in a variant where they could see the learner and were forced to interact with him.

The Milgram experiment has been highly controversial, both for the ethics of its design and for the reliability of its results and conclusions. It is commonly accepted that the ethics of the experiment would be rejected by mainstream science today, due not only to the handling of the deception involved but also to the extreme stress placed on the teachers, who often reacted emotionally to the experiment and were not debriefed . Some teachers were actually left believing they had genuinely and repeatedly shocked a learner before having the truth revealed to them later. Later researchers examining Milgram’s data also found that the experimenters conducting the tests had sometimes gone off-script in their attempts to coerce the teachers into continuing, and noted that some teachers guessed that they were the subjects of the experiment. However, attempts to validate Milgram’s findings in more ethical ways have often produced similar results.

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What Was the Milgram Experiment?

Milgram's Famous and Controversial Studies of Obedience

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Isabelle Adam (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) via Flickr

Factors That Influence Obedience

• Ethical Concerns
• Replications

The Milgram experiment was a famous and controversial study that explored the effects of authority on obedience.

During the 1960s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of obedience experiments that led to some surprising results.

In the study, an authority figure ordered participants to deliver what they believed were dangerous electrical shocks to another person. These results suggested that people are highly influenced by authority, and highly obedient . More recent investigations cast doubt on some of the implications of Milgram's findings and even the results and procedures themselves. Despite its problems, the study has, without question, made a significant impact on psychology .

Milgram started his experiments in 1961, shortly after the trial of the World War II criminal Adolf Eichmann had begun. Eichmann’s defense that he was merely following instructions when he ordered the deaths of millions of Jews roused Milgram’s interest.

In his 1974 book "Obedience to Authority," Milgram posed the question, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Procedure in the Milgram Experiment

The participants in the most famous variation of the Milgram experiment were 40 men recruited using newspaper ads. In exchange for their participation, each person was paid $4.50.

Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator, with shock levels starting at 15 volts and increasing in 15-volt increments all the way up to 450 volts. The many switches were labeled with terms including "slight shock," "moderate shock," and "danger: severe shock." The final three switches were labeled simply with an ominous "XXX."

Each participant took the role of a "teacher" who would then deliver a shock to the "student" in a neighboring room whenever an incorrect answer was given. While participants believed that they were delivering real shocks to the student, the “student” was a confederate in the experiment who was only pretending to be shocked.

As the experiment progressed, the participant would hear the learner plead to be released or even complain about a heart condition. Once they reached the 300-volt level, the learner would bang on the wall and demand to be released.

Beyond this point, the learner became completely silent and refused to answer any more questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and deliver a further shock.

Most participants asked the experimenter whether they should continue. The experimenter then responded with a series of commands to prod the participant along:

• "Please continue."
• "The experiment requires that you continue."
• "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
• "You have no other choice; you must go on."

Results of the Milgram Experiment

In the Milgram experiment, obedience was measured by the level of shock that the participant was willing to deliver. While many of the subjects became extremely agitated, distraught, and angry at the experimenter, they nevertheless continued to follow orders all the way to the end.

Milgram's results showed that 65% of the participants in the study delivered the maximum shocks. Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks, while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels.

Why did so many of the participants in this experiment perform a seemingly brutal act when instructed by an authority figure? According to Milgram, there are some situational factors that can explain such high levels of obedience:

• The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance .
• The fact that Yale (a trusted and authoritative academic institution) sponsored the study led many participants to believe that the experiment must be safe.
• The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random.
• Participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent expert.
• The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.

Later experiments conducted by Milgram indicated that the presence of rebellious peers dramatically reduced obedience levels. When other people refused to go along with the experimenter's orders, 36 out of 40 participants refused to deliver the maximum shocks.

More recent work by researchers suggests that while people do tend to obey authority figures, the process is not necessarily as cut-and-dried as Milgram depicted it.

In a 2012 essay published in PLoS Biology , researchers suggested that the degree to which people are willing to obey the questionable orders of an authority figure depends largely on two key factors:

• How much the individual agrees with the orders
• How much they identify with the person giving the orders

While it is clear that people are often far more susceptible to influence, persuasion , and obedience than they would often like to be, they are far from mindless machines just taking orders. 

Ethical Concerns in the Milgram Experiment

Milgram's experiments have long been the source of considerable criticism and controversy. From the get-go, the ethics of his experiments were highly dubious. Participants were subjected to significant psychological and emotional distress.

Some of the major ethical issues in the experiment were related to:

• The use of deception
• The lack of protection for the participants who were involved
• Pressure from the experimenter to continue even after asking to stop, interfering with participants' right to withdraw

Due to concerns about the amount of anxiety experienced by many of the participants, everyone was supposedly debriefed at the end of the experiment. The researchers reported that they explained the procedures and the use of deception.

Critics of the study have argued that many of the participants were still confused about the exact nature of the experiment, and recent findings suggest that many participants were not debriefed at all.

Replications of the Milgram Experiment

While Milgram’s research raised serious ethical questions about the use of human subjects in psychology experiments , his results have also been consistently replicated in further experiments. One review further research on obedience and found that Milgram’s findings hold true in other experiments. In 2009, researchers conducted a study designed to replicate Milgram's classic obedience experiment. The researchers made several alterations to Milgram's experiment.

• The maximum shock level was 150 volts as opposed to the original 450 volts.
• Participants were also carefully screened to eliminate those who might experience adverse reactions to the experiment.

The results of the new experiment revealed that participants obeyed at roughly the same rate that they did when Milgram conducted his original study more than 40 years ago.

Some psychologists suggested that in spite of the changes made in the replication, the study still had merit and could be used to further explore some of the situational factors that also influenced the results of Milgram's study. But other psychologists suggested that the replication was too dissimilar to Milgram's original study to draw any meaningful comparisons.

Recent Criticisms and New Findings

Psychologist Gina Perry suggests that much of what we think we know about Milgram's famous experiments is only part of the story. While researching an article on the topic, she stumbled across hundreds of audiotapes found in Yale archives that documented numerous variations of Milgram's shock experiments.

Participants Were Often Coerced

While Milgram's reports of his process report methodical and uniform procedures, the audiotapes reveal something different. During the experimental sessions, the experimenters often went off-script and coerced the subjects into continuing the shocks.

"The slavish obedience to authority we have come to associate with Milgram’s experiments comes to sound much more like bullying and coercion when you listen to these recordings," Perry suggested in an article for Discover Magazine .

Few Participants Were Really Debriefed

Milgram suggested that the subjects were "de-hoaxed" after the experiments. He claimed he later surveyed the participants and found that 84% were glad to have participated, while only 1% regretted their involvement.

However, Perry's findings revealed that of the 700 or so people who took part in different variations of his studies between 1961 and 1962, very few were truly debriefed.

A true debriefing would have involved explaining that the shocks weren't real and that the other person was not injured. Instead, Milgram's sessions were mainly focused on calming the subjects down before sending them on their way.

Many participants left the experiment in a state of considerable distress. While the truth was revealed to some months or even years later, many were simply never told a thing.

Variations Led to Differing Results

Another problem is that the version of the study presented by Milgram and the one that's most often retold does not tell the whole story. The statistic that 65% of people obeyed orders applied only to one variation of the experiment, in which 26 out of 40 subjects obeyed.

In other variations, far fewer people were willing to follow the experimenters' orders, and in some versions of the study, not a single participant obeyed.

Participants Guessed the Learner Was Faking

Perry even tracked down some of the people who took part in the experiments, as well as Milgram's research assistants. What she discovered is that many of his subjects had deduced what Milgram's intent was and knew that the "learner" was merely pretending.

Such findings cast Milgram's results in a new light. It suggests that not only did Milgram intentionally engage in some hefty misdirection to obtain the results he wanted but that many of his participants were simply playing along.

A review of Milgram's research materials suggests that the experiments exerted more pressure to obey than the original results suggested. Other variations of the experiment revealed much lower rates of obedience, and many of the participants actually altered their behavior when they guessed the true nature of the experiment.

Impact of the Milgram Experiment

Since there is no way to truly replicate the experiment due to its serious ethical and moral problems, determining whether Milgram's experiment really tells us anything about the power of obedience is impossible to determine.

So why does Milgram's experiment maintain such a powerful hold on our imaginations, even decades after the fact? Perry believes that despite all its ethical issues and the problem of never truly being able to replicate Milgram's procedures, the study has taken on the role of what she calls a "powerful parable."

Milgram's work might not hold the answers to what makes people obey or even the degree to which they truly obey. It has, however, inspired other researchers to explore what makes people follow orders and, perhaps more importantly, what leads them to question authority.

Recent findings undermine the scientific validity of the study. Milgram's work is also not truly replicable due to its ethical problems. However, the study has led to additional research on how situational factors can affect obedience to authority.

A Word From Verywell

Milgram’s experiment has become a classic in psychology , demonstrating the dangers of obedience. The research suggests that situational variables have a stronger sway than personality factors in determining whether people will obey an authority figure. However, other psychologists argue that both external and internal factors heavily influence obedience, such as personal beliefs and overall temperament.

Milgram S.  Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.  Harper & Row.

Russell N, Gregory R. The Milgram-Holocaust linkage: challenging the present consensus . State Crim J. 2015;4(2):128-153.

Russell NJC. Milgram's obedience to authority experiments: origins and early evolution . Br J Soc Psychol . 2011;50:140-162. doi:10.1348/014466610X492205

Haslam SA, Reicher SD. Contesting the "nature" of conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo's studies really show . PLoS Biol. 2012;10(11):e1001426. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001426

Milgram S. Liberating effects of group pressure . J Person Soc Psychol. 1965;1(2):127-234. doi:10.1037/h0021650

Perry G. Deception and illusion in Milgram's accounts of the obedience experiments . Theory Appl Ethics . 2013;2(2):79-92.

Blass T. The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: some things we now know about obedience to authority . J Appl Soc Psychol. 1999;29(5):955-978. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00134.x

Burger J. Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? . Am Psychol . 2009;64(1):1-11. doi:10.1037/a0010932

Elms AC. Obedience lite . American Psychologist . 2009;64(1):32-36. doi:10.1037/a0014473

Miller AG. Reflections on “replicating Milgram” (Burger, 2009) . American Psychologist . 2009;64(1):20-27. doi:10.1037/a0014407

Haslam SA, Reicher SD, Millard K, McDonald R. ‘Happy to have been of service’: The Yale archive as a window into the engaged followership of participants in Milgram’s ‘obedience’ experiments . Br J Soc Psychol . 2015;54:55-83. doi:10.1111/bjso.12074

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

A Wealth of Free Psychology!

Milgram (1963) – obedience to authority.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.

This study was published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963.

Obedience is common element found in everyday life. From obeying teachers in school, policemen on the roads, to safety signs. We obey all the time, often blindly.

It is highly recommended that you read  Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View   in order to get a better understanding of the material.

Milgram was interested in understanding how Nazi SS Officers and soldiers could commit the atrocities they did in the Holocaust. Milgram reasoned that there wasn’t a group of people who shared a common goal through free will, but a group of people who obeyed a common goal through successive obedience: Hitler sends his orders, his subordinates obey, their subordinates obey and so on. Milgram theorised that it was the social situation that caused ‘normal’ people to kill millions of innocent people.

Milgram’s study took part in an interaction laboratory in Yale University. (There were more subsequent studies in different locations such as a basement in the university, however we need not concern ourselves with these for the exam)

Aim of the Experiment

To investigate what level of obedience would be shown when participants were told by a figure of authority to administer electric shocks to another person.

To be able to quantify obedience.

Method and Design

The method was a Laboratory Experiment using an independent measures design. (Independent Measures design means that the participants only take part in one condition of the experiment!) It also was a controlled observation.

Sample and Sampling Method

Volunteer sample using 40 male participants from the New Haven area. The participants were informed of the experiment from a newspaper advertisement and direct mail solicitation and they were all paid $4.50 just for turning up to Yale, they were told that they did not have to do anything after that. $4.00 was paid simply for showing up and $0.50 was paid for ‘car fare.’

The participants were all male and were aged between 20-50. They were from a variety of occupations and education levels.

Milgram excluded students from the study because he completed pilot study with only students and concluded that there is something fundamentally different about students.

No Control group was used.

Milgram made a ‘shock generator’ which did not deliver an electric shock, but did look very impressive and real. The shock generator had 30 switches marked in 15 volt intervals from 15 to 450 volts. Milgram also placed warnings on the shock generator, which corresponded to levels of electric shock. These started at: ‘Slight shock’ and moved through: ‘Moderate shock’ ‘Strong shock’ ‘Very strong shock’ ‘Intense shock’ ‘Extreme Instensity shock’ ‘Danger severe shock’ ‘XXX’

Upon arriving to Yale University and being met by the experimenter who was wearing a grey lab coat. The subjects were told that they would be participating into a study of learning and memory. (This was in fact a lie, the study was looking into obedience)

When the participants were escorted inside by the experimenter they met another person, who they were told was another participant. In reality this second participant was really a confederate of the experimenter.

The experimenter told the participant that they would be taking part in the experiment as either a ‘learner’ or a ‘teacher.’ In reality the experimenter’s confederate would always be the ‘learner’ and the real participant would be always be the ‘teacher.’ The way that the experiment would keep this from the participant was by telling the confederate and the participant to pick straws to decide who would be the learner and who would be the teacher. Of course, the real participant would always be the teacher. Once the participant has been told that they were to play the role of the teacher. The confederate was taken to another room and the participant was shown the confederate being strapped to a chair and having electrodes placed on their head. After this the participant was taken to another room adjacent to the room in which the learner was held.

In the room that the participant had been taken to had a shock generator, which was fake, but looked and sounded real.

The experimenter told the participant that their job was to teach the learner a list and if the learner repeated one of the list items incorrectly then the teacher was to give them a shock. The teacher was to shock the learner first at 15 volts and then increase the voltage by 15 volts for each subsequent wrong answer that the learner gave. The maximum voltage that the teacher could go to on the shock generator was 450 volts.

The teacher was told that the shocks can be painful, but not harmful.

The learner, Mr. Wallace reported that he had a heart condition.

Before the administering any of the shocks to the learner. The experimenter gave a the teacher a shock of 45 volts. This was to make a teacher believe that the shock generator was real. Of course, the shock generator was not real and the learner was not harmed.

As the teacher increased the shocks recordings of the learner complaining were played.

At 300 volts the learner was heard to pound on the wall and was screaming in agony. After 300 volts the learner refused to continue and repeat the list anymore. The experimenter told the participant to continue giving shocks in the absence of a reply from the learner.

If at any point during the experiment the participant refused to go on, then the experimenter had four phrases or prods that he would use to coerce the participant to continue with the experiment. After the experimenter had used all four prods if the participant refused to continue the experiment was stopped and the participant was debriefed.

Here are the four prods:

• ‘Please continue/go on’
• ‘The experiment requires that you continue’
• ‘You have no other choice, you must go on’
• ‘Although the shocks may be painful they are not harmful’

When the participant was debriefed they were told about the true nature of the experiment and were introduced to Mr. Wallace so they could see that he was not hurt in anyway. This is very important from an ethical point of view, think about how you would feel if you thought that you had hurt or killed someone.

Quantitative Results

Milgram had predicated that less than 3% of the participants would continue to 450 volts. This prediction is not confirmed by the results of the study. In fact Milgram was almost completely wrong in his prediction.

100% of all the 40 participants reached 300 volts on the shock generator. At this point only 5 participants refused to continue anymore with the experiment.

At 375 volts a further 9 participants refused to go further

26 or 65% of the participants went to 450 volts, which was the maximum level of shock that could possibly be administered.

Qualitative Results

Participants sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, dug fingernails into their flesh, and these were typical not exceptional responses.

Quite a common sign of tension was nervous laughing fits (14 out of 40 participants), which seemed entirely out of place, even bizarre.

On one occasion, a participant had such a violently convulsive seizure that the experiment had to be halted.

– Milgram concluded that there were a number of factors that contributed to the participants high level of obedience. These include: location – the experiment took place in the interaction laboratory in Yale University. This prestigious institution may have in part caused some of the obedience. In fact Milgram replicated his study in a number of different locations to test this hypothesis and found that location did indeed play a part in levels of obedience. The formality of the situation was believed to have contributed to the obedience witnessed, if the situation was less formal, we could expect to see far less obedience than was witnessed. Further potential reasons for the level of obedience witnessed include:

– Worthy purpose of the study – the participant thought that the experiment had a noble purpose. – Learner had volunteered – the participants volunteered for the study, which may suggest that they have common characteristics that may have been the true cause of such high levels of obedience. – Commitment to experiment – the participants had been paid for their time and therefore they may have felt that they had an obligation to continue. – Teachers role occurred by apparent chance – as the participants thought that they could have been the teacher or the learner, this may have had an impact upon the results. – Closed setting – as the interaction laboratory was closed off from the outside world the participants may have obeyed because no one else could see them. – Little time for reflection – if the participants hesitated in any way the experimenter would use one of the prods. This means that the participant did not have much time to think about their actions and this may have contributed to their obedience. – Told shocks were not dangerous – the experimenter told the participants that the ‘shocks are painful but not harmful’ therefore the participants may have been more willing to obey the experimenter. – Up until shock 20, learner was still participating – only after the 20th shock did the learner refuse to continue and that may have contributed to the obedience witnessed. – Conflict: not to harm others vs obedience to authority – the participants may have simply chosen the simplest and easiest option.

There were two proposed explanations of the obedience witnessed:

Individual explanation – Something about them as people caused them to obey.

Situational explanation – the situation they were in influenced them to behave in the way that they did. Factors influencing this were that they had volunteered for an experiment for which they had been paid, the formality of the location and the behaviour of the experimenter. This is the explanation that was favoured by Milgram because he was a social psychologist.

Milgram (1963) Evaluation

– Ethics – the study is one of the most infamous studies in Psychology’s history, because of it’s ethics. The study is very low in ethical principles. Although the participants were given the right to withdraw, they certainly were not made fully aware of it. The participants were also paid for their time and this is highly unethical, because payment can leave participants feeling obligated to continue with the experiment despite any objections they may have. The participants were also not protected from harm.

+ Ethics – the only part of the study that was high in ethical principles was the debrief that the participants were given at the end of the study.

+ Laboratory Experiment – the use of a laboratory experiment is a strength because it allows the experimenter to control many of the extraneous and confounding variables, this increases the validity of the results and conclusions of the study because we can see that the independent variable caused the change.

– No control group – having no control group means that the validity of the study is somewhat low because the experimenter cannot establish if the independent variable caused the change, it may have been something in the participants that caused the results and not the authority figure.

+ Reliability – the use of a laboratory experiment is a strength because it increases the reliability of the results and conclusions of the study.

– Ecological validity – the use of a laboratory experiment is a weakness because it means that the ecological validity is low, therefore the results cannot be easily generalised to real life situations. This is furthered as the participant was put in a novel situation, that is it was not a situation that they would find themselves in, in normal life. Furthermore, we can argue that the experiment has not informed us about obedience in everyday life and that it has only informed us about the obedience in that one situation.

– Demand characteristics – as the participants were paid for their time, demand characteristics may have played a part in the participant’s levels of obedience, they may have felt an obligation to the experimenter and thus they followed what the experimenter wanted.

– Representativeness – the sample was not representative of a the German people, nor was the sample representative of a wide population. The sample was also androcentric – it contained only men. Therefore we can argue that the results and conclusions of the study are not generalisable to wider population.

+ Quantitative data – the collection of quantitative data is a strength because it is easy to compare, easy to analyse and can be easily tested for reliability.

– Quantitative data – on the other hand, the collection of quantitative data makes it difficult to establish cause and effect, the experimenter has to infer cause and effect.

+ Qualitative data – the use of qualitative data is a strength because it makes it easy to establish cause and effect. Secondly, qualitative data is rich in detail, which can help bring out more information about the participants thoughts.

– Qualitative data – on the other hand, the collection of qualitative data makes it difficult to compare the results.

+ Usefulness – the experiment is useful because it does provide some support for the hypothesis that ‘Nazi soldiers were fundamentally different to normal people. Moreover, the study is useful because it tells us that we have a tendency to follow people with authority.

Further Reading

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments

The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil

Psych Yogi’s Top Ten Psychology Revision Tips for the A* Student

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The Milgram Experiment: How Far Will You Go to Obey an Order?

Understand the infamous study and its conclusions about human nature

• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Psychology, University of California - Santa Barbara
• B.A., Psychology and Peace & Conflict Studies, University of California - Berkeley

In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of studies on the concepts of obedience and authority. His experiments involved instructing study participants to deliver increasingly high-voltage shocks to an actor in another room, who would scream and eventually go silent as the shocks became stronger. The shocks weren't real, but study participants were made to believe that they were.

Today, the Milgram experiment is widely criticized on both ethical and scientific grounds. However, Milgram's conclusions about humanity's willingness to obey authority figures remain influential and well-known.

Key Takeaways: The Milgram Experiment

• The goal of the Milgram experiment was to test the extent of humans' willingness to obey orders from an authority figure.
• Participants were told by an experimenter to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to another individual. Unbeknownst to the participants, shocks were fake and the individual being shocked was an actor.
• The majority of participants obeyed, even when the individual being shocked screamed in pain.
• The experiment has been widely criticized on ethical and scientific grounds.

Milgram’s Famous Experiment

In the most well-known version of Stanley Milgram's experiment, the 40 male participants were told that the experiment focused on the relationship between punishment, learning, and memory. The experimenter then introduced each participant to a second individual, explaining that this second individual was participating in the study as well. Participants were told that they would be randomly assigned to roles of "teacher" and "learner." However, the "second individual" was an actor hired by the research team, and the study was set up so that the true participant would always be assigned to the "teacher" role.

During the study, the learner was located in a separate room from the teacher (the real participant), but the teacher could hear the learner through the wall. The experimenter told the teacher that the learner would memorize word pairs and instructed the teacher to ask the learner questions. If the learner responded incorrectly to a question, the teacher would be asked to administer an electric shock. The shocks started at a relatively mild level (15 volts) but increased in 15-volt increments up to 450 volts. (In actuality, the shocks were fake, but the participant was led to believe they were real.)

Participants were instructed to give a higher shock to the learner with each wrong answer. When the 150-volt shock was administered, the learner would cry out in pain and ask to leave the study. He would then continue crying out with each shock until the 330-volt level, at which point he would stop responding.

During this process, whenever participants expressed hesitation about continuing with the study, the experimenter would urge them to go on with increasingly firm instructions, culminating in the statement, "You have no other choice, you must go on." The study ended when participants refused to obey the experimenter’s demand, or when they gave the learner the highest level of shock on the machine (450 volts).

Milgram found that participants obeyed the experimenter at an unexpectedly high rate: 65% of the participants gave the learner the 450-volt shock.

Critiques of the Milgram Experiment

Milgram’s experiment has been widely criticized on ethical grounds. Milgram’s participants were led to believe that they acted in a way that harmed someone else, an experience that could have had long-term consequences. Moreover, an investigation by writer Gina Perry uncovered that some participants appear to not have been fully debriefed after the study —they were told months later, or not at all, that the shocks were fake and the learner wasn’t harmed. Milgram’s studies could not be perfectly recreated today, because researchers today are required to pay much more attention to the safety and well-being of human research subjects.

Researchers have also questioned the scientific validity of Milgram’s results. In her examination of the study, Perry found that Milgram’s experimenter may have gone off script and told participants to obey many more times than the script specified. Additionally, some research suggests that participants may have figured out that the learner was not actually harmed : in interviews conducted after the study, some participants reported that they didn’t think the learner was in any real danger. This mindset is likely to have affected their behavior in the study.

Variations on the Milgram Experiment

Milgram and other researchers conducted numerous versions of the experiment over time. The participants' levels of compliance with the experimenter’s demands varied greatly from one study to the next. For example, when participants were in closer proximity to the learner (e.g. in the same room), they were less likely give the learner the highest level of shock.

Another version of the study brought three "teachers" into the experiment room at once. One was a real participant, and the other two were actors hired by the research team. During the experiment, the two non-participant teachers would quit as the level of shocks began to increase. Milgram found that these conditions made the real participant far more likely to "disobey" the experimenter, too: only 10% of participants gave the 450-volt shock to the learner.

In yet another version of the study, two experimenters were present, and during the experiment, they would begin arguing with one another about whether it was right to continue the study. In this version, none of the participants gave the learner the 450-volt shock.

Replicating the Milgram Experiment

Researchers have sought to replicate Milgram's original study with additional safeguards in place to protect participants. In 2009, Jerry Burger replicated Milgram’s famous experiment at Santa Clara University with new safeguards in place: the highest shock level was 150 volts, and participants were told that the shocks were fake immediately after the experiment ended. Additionally, participants were screened by a clinical psychologist before the experiment began, and those found to be at risk of a negative reaction to the study were deemed ineligible to participate.

Burger found that participants obeyed at similar levels as Milgram’s participants: 82.5% of Milgram’s participants gave the learner the 150-volt shock, and 70% of Burger’s participants did the same.

Milgram’s Legacy

Milgram’s interpretation of his research was that everyday people are capable of carrying out unthinkable actions in certain circumstances. His research has been used to explain atrocities such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, though these applications are by no means widely accepted or agreed upon.

Importantly, not all participants obeyed the experimenter’s demands , and Milgram’s studies shed light on the factors that enable people to stand up to authority. In fact, as sociologist Matthew Hollander writes, we may be able to learn from the participants who disobeyed, as their strategies may enable us to respond more effectively to an unethical situation. The Milgram experiment suggested that human beings are susceptible to obeying authority, but it also demonstrated that obedience is not inevitable.

• Baker, Peter C. “Electric Schlock: Did Stanley Milgram's Famous Obedience Experiments Prove Anything?” Pacific Standard (2013, Sep. 10). https://psmag.com/social-justice/electric-schlock-65377
• Burger, Jerry M. "Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?."  American Psychologist 64.1 (2009): 1-11. http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2008-19206-001
• Gilovich, Thomas, Dacher Keltner, and Richard E. Nisbett. Social Psychology . 1st edition, W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
• Hollander, Matthew. “How to Be a Hero: Insight From the Milgram Experiment.” HuffPost Contributor Network (2015, Apr. 29). https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-to-be-a-hero-insight-_b_6566882
• Jarrett, Christian. “New Analysis Suggests Most Milgram Participants Realised the ‘Obedience Experiments’ Were Not Really Dangerous.” The British Psychological Society: Research Digest (2017, Dec. 12). https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram-participants-provide-little-support-for-the-contemporary-theory-of-engaged-followership/
• Perry, Gina. “The Shocking Truth of the Notorious Milgram Obedience Experiments.” Discover Magazine Blogs (2013, Oct. 2). http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/
• Romm, Cari. “Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments.” The Atlantic (2015, Jan. 28) . https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/
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Author Interviews

Taking a closer look at milgram's shocking obedience study.

Behind the Shock Machine

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In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale, conducted a series of experiments that became famous. Unsuspecting Americans were recruited for what purportedly was an experiment in learning. A man who pretended to be a recruit himself was wired up to a phony machine that supposedly administered shocks. He was the "learner." In some versions of the experiment he was in an adjoining room.

The unsuspecting subject of the experiment, the "teacher," read lists of words that tested the learner's memory. Each time the learner got one wrong, which he intentionally did, the teacher was instructed by a man in a white lab coat to deliver a shock. With each wrong answer the voltage went up. From the other room came recorded and convincing protests from the learner — even though no shock was actually being administered.

The results of Milgram's experiment made news and contributed a dismaying piece of wisdom to the public at large: It was reported that almost two-thirds of the subjects were capable of delivering painful, possibly lethal shocks, if told to do so. We are as obedient as Nazi functionaries.

Or are we? Gina Perry, a psychologist from Australia, has written Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments . She has been retracing Milgram's steps, interviewing his subjects decades later.

"The thought of quitting never ... occurred to me," study participant Bill Menold told Perry in an Australian radio documentary . "Just to say: 'You know what? I'm walking out of here' — which I could have done. It was like being in a situation that you never thought you would be in, not really being able to think clearly."

In his experiments, Milgram was "looking to investigate what it was that had contributed to the brainwashing of American prisoners of war by the Chinese [in the Korean war]," Perry tells NPR's Robert Siegel.

Interview Highlights

On turning from an admirer of Milgram to a critic

"That was an unexpected outcome for me, really. I regarded Stanley Milgram as a misunderstood genius who'd been penalized in some ways for revealing something troubling and profound about human nature. By the end of my research I actually had quite a very different view of the man and the research."

Watch A Video Of One Of The Milgram Obedience Experiments

On the many variations of the experiment

"Over 700 people took part in the experiments. When the news of the experiment was first reported, and the shocking statistic that 65 percent of people went to maximum voltage on the shock machine was reported, very few people, I think, realized then and even realize today that that statistic applied to 26 of 40 people. Of those other 700-odd people, obedience rates varied enormously. In fact, there were variations of the experiment where no one obeyed."

On how Milgram's study coincided with the trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann — and how the experiment reinforced what Hannah Arendt described as "the banality of evil"

"The Eichmann trial was a televised trial and it did reintroduce the whole idea of the Holocaust to a new American public. And Milgram very much, I think, believed that Hannah Arendt's view of Eichmann as a cog in a bureaucratic machine was something that was just as applicable to Americans in New Haven as it was to people in Germany."

On the ethics of working with human subjects

"Certainly for people in academia and scholars the ethical issues involved in Milgram's experiment have always been a hot issue. They were from the very beginning. And Milgram's experiment really ignited a debate particularly in social sciences about what was acceptable to put human subjects through."

Gina Perry is an Australian psychologist. She has previously written for The Age and The Australian. Chris Beck/Courtesy of The New Press hide caption

Gina Perry is an Australian psychologist. She has previously written for The Age and The Australian.

On conversations with the subjects, decades after the experiment

"[Bill Menold] doesn't sound resentful. I'd say he sounds thoughtful and he has reflected a lot on the experiment and the impact that it's had on him and what it meant at the time. I did interview someone else who had been disobedient in the experiment but still very much resented 50 years later that he'd never been de-hoaxed at the time and he found that really unacceptable."

On the problem that one of social psychology's most famous findings cannot be replicated

"I think it leaves social psychology in a difficult situation. ... it is such an iconic experiment. And I think it really leads to the question of why it is that we continue to refer to and believe in Milgram's results. I think the reason that Milgram's experiment is still so famous today is because in a way it's like a powerful parable. It's so widely known and so often quoted that it's taken on a life of its own. ... This experiment and this story about ourselves plays some role for us 50 years later."

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Article contents

Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority.

• Stephen Gibson Stephen Gibson Heriot-Watt University, School of Social Sciences
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.511
• Published online: 30 June 2020

Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority are among the most influential and controversial social scientific studies ever conducted. They remain staples of introductory psychology courses and textbooks, yet their influence reaches far beyond psychology, with myriad other disciplines finding lessons in them. Indeed, the experiments have long since broken free of the confines of academia, occupying a place in popular culture that is unrivaled among psychological experiments. The present article begins with an overview of Milgram’s account of his experimental procedure and findings, before focussing on recent scholarship that has used materials from Milgram’s archive to challenge many of the long-held assumptions about the experiments. Three areas in which our understanding of the obedience experiments has undergone a radical shift in recent years are the subject of particular focus. First, work that has identified new ethical problems with Milgram’s studies is summarized. Second, hitherto unknown methodological variations in Milgram’s experimental procedures are considered. Third, the interactions that took place in the experimental sessions themselves are explored. This work has contributed to a shift in how we see the obedience experiments. Rather than viewing the experiments as demonstrations of people’s propensity to follow orders, it is now clear that people did not follow orders in Milgram’s experiments. The experimenter did a lot more than simply issue orders, and when he did, participants found it relatively straightforward to defy them. These arguments are discussed in relation to the definition of obedience that has typically been adopted in psychology, the need for further historical work on Milgram’s experiments, and the possibilities afforded by the development of a broader project of secondary qualitative analysis of laboratory interaction in psychology experiments.

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Explanations for Obedience - Milgram (1963)

Last updated 22 Mar 2021

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Milgram (1963) conducted one of the most famous and influential psychological investigations of obedience. He wanted to find out if ordinary American citizens would obey an unjust order from an authority figure and inflict pain on another person because they were instructed to.

Milgram’s sample consisted of 40 male participants from a range of occupations and backgrounds. The participants were all volunteers who had responded to an advert in a local paper, which offered $4.50 to take part in an experiment on ‘punishment and learning’.

The 40 participants were all invited to a laboratory at Yale University and upon arrival they met with the experimenter and another participant, Mr Wallace, who were both confederates.

The experimenter explained that one person would be randomly assigned the role of teacher and the other, a learner. However, the real participant was always assigned the role of teacher. The experimenter explained that the teacher, the real participant, would read the learner a series of word pairs and then test their recall. The learner, who was positioned in an adjacent room, would indicate his choice using a system of lights. The teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock ever time the learner made a mistake and to increase the voltage after each mistake.

The teacher watched the learner being strapped to the electric chair and was given a sample electric shock to convince them that the procedure was real. The learner wasn’t actually strapped to the chair and gave predetermined answers to the test. As the electric shocks increased the learner’s screams, which were recorded, became louder and more dramatic. At 180 volts the learner complained of a weak heart. At 300 volts he banged on the wall and demanded to leave and at 315 volts he became silent, to give the illusions that was unconscious, or even dead.

The experiment continued until the teacher refused to continue, or 450 volts was reached. If the teacher tried to stop the experiment, the experimenter would respond with a series of prods, for example: ‘The experiment requires that you continue.’ Following the experiment the participants were debriefed.

Milgram found that all of the real participants went to at least 300 volts and 65% continued until the full 450 volts. He concluded that under the right circumstances ordinary people will obey unjust orders.

Milgram’s study has been heavily criticised for breaking numerous ethical guidelines, including: deception , right to withdraw and protection from harm.

Milgram deceived his participants as he said the experiment was on ‘punishment and learning’, when in fact he was measuring obedience, and he pretended the learner was receiving electric shocks. In addition, it was very difficult for participants with withdraw from the experiment, as the experimenter prompted the participants to continue. Finally, many of the participants reported feeling exceptionally stressed and anxious while taking part in the experiment and therefore they were not protect from psychological harm. This is an issue, as Milgram didn’t respect his participants, some of whom felt very guilt following the experiment, knowing that they could have harmed another person. However, it must be noted that it was essential for Milgram to deceive his participants and remove their right to withdraw to test obedience and produce valid results. Furthermore, he did debrief his participants following the experiment and 83.7% of participants said that they were happy to have taken part in the experiment and contribute to scientific research.

Milgram’s study has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. Milgram tested obedience in a laboratory, which is very different to real-life situations of obedience, where people are often asked to follow more subtle instructions, rather than administering electric shocks. As a result we are unable to generalise his findings to real life situations of obedience and cannot conclude that people would obey less severe instructions in the same way.

Finally, Milgram’s research lacked population validity. Milgram used a bias sample of 40 male volunteers, which means we are unable to generalise the results to other populations, in particular females, and cannot conclude if female participants would respond in a similar way.

• Ethical Issues
• Right to withdraw
• Protection from harm

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Research Into Obedience Milgram (1964)

March 4, 2021 - paper 1 introductory topics in psychology | social psychology, ao1: description obedience to authority research, milgram 1963.

One of the most influential pieces of research into obedience is undoubtedly from Stanley Milgram (his electric shock study). Milgram was the son of Polish refugees and wanted to show that, when in the presence of an authority figure, any individual would follow instructions blindly rather than stand up to an authority figure and resist their commands.

Key Definition  Obedience :  Complying to the demands of a perceived authority figure, often resulting the individual behaving in a way they would not normally.

Milgram (1963) aimed to test the Germans are different hypothesis with his study at Yale University (a prestigious setting).

Participants:

Milgram used a  volunteer sample , he advertised in a local newspaper for male participants to take part in his study and offered all participants a payment for their participation.

During the experiment many of the participants showed signs of extreme tension. They shook, sweated and stuttered. Many of the participants repeatedly argued with the experimenter yet all participants continued to deliver the shocks up to 300V, and a staggering 62.5% continuing to 450V.  This was unexpected, as before conducting the research, people had estimated that most would stop at 100V.

Conclusion:

AO3: Evaluation Of Milgram’s Obedience Research

Weaknesses:

(1) Point:  However, Milgram’s research can be criticised for  lacking ecological validity:   Evidence:  For example Orne & Holland suggested that participants in Milgram’s study only administered the shocks because they didn’t believe they were real.  Evaluation:  This is problematic because the findings from the study cannot be generalised past the artificial setting to everyday life as the research is likely to have recorded artificial behaviour.

**Some research suggests that women are actually more obedient than men, Sheridan & King found that 100% of women, compared to 54% of men, administered fake electric shocks to a puppy when it responded incorrectly to a command.**

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Meta-Milgram: An Empirical Synthesis of the Obedience Experiments

Nick haslam.

School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Steve Loughnan

Conceived and designed the experiments: NH SL GP. Performed the experiments: NH SL. Analyzed the data: NH SL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: GP. Wrote the paper: NH SL GP.

Milgram's famous experiment contained 23 small-sample conditions that elicited striking variations in obedient responding. A synthesis of these diverse conditions could clarify the factors that influence obedience in the Milgram paradigm. We assembled data from the 21 conditions ( N  = 740) in which obedience involved progression to maximum voltage (overall rate 43.6%) and coded these conditions on 14 properties pertaining to the learner, the teacher, the experimenter, the learner-teacher relation, the experimenter-teacher relation, and the experimental setting. Logistic regression analysis indicated that eight factors influenced the likelihood that teachers continued to the 450 volt shock: the experimenter's directiveness, legitimacy, and consistency; group pressure on the teacher to disobey; the indirectness, proximity, and intimacy of the relation between teacher and learner; and the distance between the teacher and the experimenter. Implications are discussed.

Introduction

The Milgram study is arguably the most iconic experiment in the history of psychology. In the fifty years since it was conducted, debate about its implications has spread far beyond the academic literature of social psychology and into the culture at large. Scholars continue to discuss whether Milgram demonstrated the capacity for evil in everyday people, the roots of the Holocaust, or the ethical limitations of psychological research. Arguments continue on the nature of authority and the meaning of obedience within Milgram's paradigm [1] and how the study's findings should be theorized [2] . Attempts have been made to replicate it with mixed results [3] , [4] and the original data have been re-examined [5] . Meanwhile, archival scholarship continues to examine the origins of Milgram's work [6] and to unearth troubling discrepancies between its public representation and how its methodology was executed in practice [7] .

The most famous of Milgram's findings is associated with the best-known version of his experiment. A substantial majority of study participants, recruited from the general public as “teachers” in a study of paired associates learning, continued to shock an unresponsive and possibly dying “learner” up to the maximum 450 volts at the behest of the “experimenter.” (Although it remains unclear and somewhat controversial how this behavior should be conceptualized, and even whether it is best described as ‘obedience’ [7] , we use that term as shorthand to describe the progression of experimental subjects to 450 volts.) This rate (62.5%) exceeded by a factor of 500 the figure estimated by psychiatrists who read the study protocol [8] . It is the shock value of this finding – the fact that a majority of ordinary people were apparently capable of destructive obedience – that has triggered the enduring interest in Milgram's work, and the desire to make sense of it.

Less well-known is the fact that this finding represents just one of 23 diverse experimental conditions that Milgram conducted, which varied enormously in levels of obedient responding. Only 18 of these were reported in the monograph that reported the study [8] . The full set of 23 conditions, numbered in the order they were carried out from August 1961 to May 1962 and in accordance with Milgram's notes from the Yale University archive, are sketched in Table 1 . Although several conditions are familiar to many psychologists, others are obscure and rarely discussed. For example, a survey of ten social psychology textbooks [9] , [10] , [11] , [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , [18] shows that although the average text refers to 7.6 conditions, nine conditions go completely unmentioned (see Figure 1 , which lists conditions according to Milgram's numbering: see Table 1 ).

An analysis of the data from the 23 study conditions could establish which of the situational properties that vary across conditions covary with participants' rates of progression to maximum voltage. However, this task is made difficult by the ad hoc nature of the conditions [6] , which compose a patchwork of methodological elements rather than a systematic investigation of well-articulated experimental factors. Milgram often designed new conditions to explore specific situational factors that might influence obedience, such as the well-known Bridgeport replication, which repeated the original Yale study in an industrial setting. These specific variations are commonly reported as pairwise comparisons of study conditions, each of which had a small sample size (usually 40, but sometimes only 20). Thus the 47.5% obedience rate in Bridgeport is usually contrasted with the 62.5% rate for the comparable condition at Yale, and interpreted as evidence that the status, legitimacy, or prestige of the setting influences obedience. As a result, it is difficult to offer any definitive conclusions about Milgram's findings based on anything more than piecemeal analysis of small sample variations within the larger experimental program.

A better way to examine the experimental factors that influence obedience in Milgram's research would be to synthesize its findings by amalgamating his conditions in a manner akin to meta-analysis and assessing moderators of obedience in the combined sample. The combined sample of the 23 conditions is a substantial 780 participants. No analysis that synthesizes conditions from Milgram's study to examine determinants of obedience has previously been conducted. Packer [5] carried out a meta-analysis of eight conditions but focused on the critical voltage levels at which disobedient participants refused to continue rather than on differences in levels of obedience across conditions. Reicher, Haslam, and Smith [19] correlated levels of obedience in 15 of the 23 conditions with ratings by social psychologists and students of the teacher's probable level of identification with experimenter and learner, but did not examine characteristics internal to the Milgram study as predictors of obedience levels.

Deciding how to systematically characterize the variations among Milgram's conditions in a way that might illuminate differences in obedience rates is no easy task. Milgram himself did not provide a systematic classification of his conditions beyond simply clustering them into those exploring the “immediacy of the victim”, “presence of an authority figure”, and “group experiments”. Other writers have identified numerous differentiating characteristics, often labeled in multiple ways. Sometimes these characteristics have been integrated into two broad components: those that connect the teacher to the experimenter and those that link the teacher to the learner. Gilovich et al. [12] refer to these sets of features as “tuning out [or in] the experimenter” and “tuning in [or out] the learner”. Other writers offer alternative distinctions. For example, Aronson et al. [9] distinguish informational and normative influences. Myers [15] proposes that the primary factors are the victim's distance, the authority's closeness and legitimacy, institutional authority, and the liberating effect of disobedient peers. Sutton and Douglas [17] sort the relevant factors into proximity of experimenter to teacher, proximity of learner to teacher, authority of the situation, authority or status of the experimenter, and group pressure.

Rather than begin with a particular classification of factors that might influence obedience levels across the study conditions, we began with an abstract schema of Milgram's experiment and attempted to fit his experimental variations into this schema. By this means we attempted to determine inductively which of a large set of experimental features are independently associated with variations in obedience. Our schema (see Figure 2 ) started from the recognition that the Milgram experiment involves three hierarchically organized roles (Experimenter, Teacher, Learner) and two relationships between them (Experimenter-Teacher and Teacher-Learner), there being no unmediated relationship between Experimenter and Learner. By “relationship” we mean any intrinsically relational aspect of their connection, such as distance or intimacy. With one exception the factors that Milgram varied across his conditions can be located within one of the three roles or the two relationships. The exception is the setting in which the experiment was conducted (i.e., Yale versus Bridgeport). The schema therefore identifies six classes of factors that Milgram manipulated across his study conditions.

Having developed a reasonably comprehensive set of study properties to capture the variations among Milgram's conditions, we conducted a statistical analysis to determine which of these factors were independently associated with obedience levels. Treating Milgram's conditions as a single study with a large sample, rather than as a variegated collection of studies with small samples, allows a powerful test of the situational influences on obedience within his paradigm. The aim of our study was to determine which of the many potential influences were statistically reliable, rather than to test a particular theory of obedience or interpretation of the Milgram study. Nevertheless, any such theory or interpretation must be consistent with the determinants that are found to be efficacious.

Materials and Methods

Ethics statement.

This report presents a re-analysis of publically available, previously published data originally collected by Milgram and his colleagues in 1961 and 1962, prior to the advent of institutional review boards. No informed consent was required at that time by Yale University. Participants provided uninformed verbal consent and signed a waiver absolving Yale University of legal responsibility.

Selection of conditions

Milgram's study included 23 conditions in which participants completed a variation of the obedience protocol. Another variation, sometimes referred to as condition 21, assessed levels of obedience predicted by laypeople and psychiatrists rather than actual behavior, and is therefore not an experiment. Two conditions – numbers 10 (“conflicting instructions”) and 12 (“role reversal”) – differ from the others in that proceeding to the 450 V shock involves dis obeying the experimenter, and because of this fundamental difference in the meaning of the dependent measure these conditions were excluded from the analysis. The analysis therefore included 21 of the 23 conditions, and 740 of the 780 (94.9%) total participants.

Four conditions with complex, two-part designs allow two alternative ways of counting the number of obedient participants. Obedience levels from part B of condition 15 (“good experimenter, bad experimenter”) were selected because part A ended at 150 V and therefore did not allow all participants the opportunity to defy the experimenter. Parts A of conditions 17 (“teacher in charge”), 18 (“no experimenter”), and 22 (“peer authority”) were selected because they all allowed participants to proceed all the way to 450 V before part B was initiated.

To determine which variations among study conditions were independently associated with differences in obedience rates, we developed a set of codes to distinguish the conditions. Development of the codes was guided by two considerations: codes should identify distinctions recognized by Milgram or other scholars, and they should be reasonably exhaustive, ideally yielding a unique configuration of codes for each condition. The latter goal was successfully met with two exceptions. Conditions 5 and 6 (“coronary trouble” and “different actors”) were coded identically because they differed only in the actors playing the learner and experimenter roles. Conditions 18 and 19 (“no experimenter” and “authority for afar”) were coded identically because in both conditions the experimenter departs after explaining the study and leaves a phone number on which he can be contacted, with no other significant procedural differences.

A total of 14 codes were developed and organized into our six-part schema (see Figure 2 ). Some codes pertained to variations in properties of the three roles in the study: the learner, the teacher, and the experimenter. Others pertained to the relations between pairs of protagonists or roles: the teacher-learner relation and the experimenter-teacher relation. Finally, one code related to the overall setting or context of the study. With one exception, all codes were dichotomous with “0” representing the more common default position and “1” representing the deviant condition, which guided the naming of the coded properties. The codes are described according to the six-part schema below, and are summarized in Tables 2 and ​ and3, 3 , along with their associated obedience rates.

Learner properties

Two codes referred to properties of the learner. “ Vulnerability ” refers to three conditions (5 [“coronary trouble”], 6 [“different actors”] & 23 [“Bridgeport”]) in which the learner mentions heart trouble at the beginning of the experiment, augmenting the heart-related concerns that are part of the standard script in the other conditions. Thus conditions 5, 6, and 23 were coded “1” and all other conditions coded “0”. “ Rights expression ” refers specifically to condition 8 (“learner's proviso”), where at the outset the learner says he will only participate if he is able to leave when he wants. Condition 8 was therefore coded “1” and all others “0”.

Teacher properties

Three codes referred to properties of the teacher role. “ Female gender ” pertains to the single condition (20 [“women”]) that employed female participants, so this condition was coded “1” and all others “0”. “ Group pressure to obey ” refers to the distinction between two conditions (9 [“group pressure to obey”] & 11 [“group choice”]) in which multiple teachers (actually confederates) exert pressure on the participant teacher to escalate the shocks (coded “1”) and all other conditions (coded “0”), where no such pressure was exerted. “ Group pressure to disobey ” contrasted one condition (7 [“group pressure to disobey”]) involving pressure within the teacher group against obeying (coded “1”) and all other conditions (coded “0”). These group pressure variants are discussed in terms of “normative influence,” “social consensus”, or “social support” by some writers on the Milgram study.

Experimenter properties

Four experimenter properties were coded. “ Number ” distinguishes two conditions (15 [“good experimenter, bad experimenter”] & 16 [“experimenter becomes learner”]) employing two experimenters, both coded “1”, from all others, coded “0”. (Condition 18, entitled “no experimenter,” actually has an experimenter who meets the participant before being called away.) “ Illegitimacy ” – referred to as low experimenter “status” or “authority” by some writers – distinguishes two conditions (17 [“teacher in charge”] & 22 [“peer authority”], both coded “1”) in which an apparent participant (actually a confederate) takes over the experimenter role, from all other conditions, coded “0”, where the experimenter is identified as a scientist or researcher. “ Non-directiveness ” distinguishes three conditions (11 [“group choice”], 14 [“carte blanche”] & 22 [“peer authority”], all coded “1”) in which no explicit direction is given to increase the shocks (shock level is instead left to the discretion of the participants) from all other conditions, where such a direction is always given (coded “0”). Finally, “ Inconsistency ” separates one condition (15 [“good experimenter, bad experimenter”]) in which the experimenter role is internally conflicted (coded “1”) from all other conditions (coded “0”), where the role is consistent, most often because there is a single, unwavering experimenter.

Teacher-learner relation properties

Three properties of the relationship between teacher and learner were coded. “ Intimacy ” distinguishes the little-known condition 24 (“intimate relationships”), in which the learner was a friend or relative of the teacher (coded “1”), from all other conditions (coded “0”), where the two were strangers. “ Proximity ” – sometimes referred to as “immediacy” – captures degrees of distance between teacher and learner. Least proximal is condition 1 (“no feedback”, coded “0”), where the learner is in an adjoining room and does not cry out, followed by the baseline condition 2 (“voice feedback”, coded “1”) in which the learner is in an adjoining room but screams. Condition 3 (“proximity”, coded “2”) has the learner seated close behind the teacher in the same room, and condition 4 (“touch”, coded “3”) has the teacher holding the learner's hand to the shock-plate. All other conditions, which followed the baseline condition in this regard, were coded “1”. Finally, the “ Indirectness ” code distinguished condition 13 (“non-trigger position”, coded “1”), where the participant is a teacher who reads the word pairs while another administers the shocks, from all other conditions (coded “0”), where the teacher's role in shocking the learner was unmediated.

Experimenter-teacher relation properties

One code, “ Distance ”, captured variation among conditions in the relation between experimenter and teacher. Four conditions in which the experimenter absents himself during the study (17 [“teacher in charge”], 18 [“no experimenter”], 19 [“authority from afar”] and 22 [“peer authority”]) (coded “1”), are distinguished from all other conditions (coded “0”), where the experimenter is physically present in the experimental situation throughout.

Setting property

A final code pertained to the setting or context of the experiment, distinguishing condition 23 (“Bridgeport”), conducted in an industrial neighborhood (coded “1”), from all other conditions (coded “0”), which were carried out on Yale University's ivied campus. The code was called “ Low status ”, but other writers have referred to it as low “prestige”, “legitimacy”, “institutional authority”, or “authority of the situation.”

All coding was based on published descriptions of the conditions and on Milgram's original notes, accessed by the third author at the Yale University archives. The original, hand-written data summary sheets were also used to confirm obedience rates for each condition. Data file construction .

A data file ( N  = 740) was reconstructed using the known sample sizes for each condition ( n  = 40 for 16 conditions, n  = 20 for 5 conditions) and the number of participants in each condition who proceeded to deliver the 450 V shock. Obedience was coded dichotomously as delivering this highest shock, consistent with standard practice and in recognition of the marked irregularity of the distribution of highest voltages delivered, which renders continuously scored voltage level statistically problematic as a dependent measure.

Across the 21 conditions the proportion of obedient participants was 323/740 (43.6%). Table 4 presents rates of obedience as a function of each dichotomous code. Eight codes were associated with differential rates of obedience. Obedience rates were higher for more vulnerable learners ( p  = .011), for female teachers ( p  = .005), and for more indirect teacher-learner relations ( p <.001). Rates were lower when there was more group pressure for experimenters to disobey ( p <.001), when the teacher-learner relation was more intimate ( p  = .009), when the experimenter was non-directive ( p <.001) and inconsistent ( p  = .031), and when the experimenter-teacher relation was more distant ( p  = .007). A comparable test of the bivariate relationship between obedience and the one non-dichotomous code, “Proximity”, showed that greater proximity between teacher and learner was associated with lesser obedience (Spearman r  = −.37, p <.001).

In view of the redundancy among the predictor codes, a logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine which condition properties were independently associated with obedience levels. “Proximity,” was coded in increasing order of closeness from 0 to 3. Although linear, quadratic, and cubic effects for this variable were estimated within the model, only the linear effect was of interest. The model accounted for substantial variation in obedience (Nagelkerke R 2  = 0.30, p <.01) and eight of the 14 coded variables independently predicted this outcome. Findings of the analysis are summarized in Table 5 , where positive values of B signify that conditions higher in the property named by the code tend to have higher rates of obedience, and negative values signify the reverse.

Table 5 indicates that three of the four Experimenter variables were associated with obedience. Higher obedience resulted when experimenters gave authoritative directions rather than leaving shock levels to teachers ( p <.001), and lower obedience occurred when their directions were inconsistent (i.e., differing between experimenters: p  = .006). Surprisingly, obedience rates were somewhat higher when the authority was illegitimate (i.e., a peer rather than a researcher: p  = .004), an effect that might reflect collinearity among predictors given the lack of bivariate association between illegitimacy and obedience shown in Table 4 . The presence of multiple experimenters did not influence obedience levels ( p  = .56).

Similarly mixed findings were obtained for the three Teacher variables, only one of which had a significant effect. Pressure to disobey from a group of teachers substantially decreased obedience ( p <.001). However, pressure to obey from a group of teachers only marginally increased it ( p  = .052) and teacher gender had no effect ( p  = .467), the higher rate of obedience obtained for female teachers in the bivariate analysis disappearing when other variables were statistically controlled. Neither of the two Learner variables – vulnerability ( p  = .987) or rights expression ( p  = .109) – had significant effects on obedience, the bivariate vulnerability association also disappearing when other variables were held constant.

Turning to the relationship and setting variables, distance between the Experimenter and Teacher had an effect ( p  = .003), such that greater distance between them was associated with lesser obedience. All three Teacher-Learner relation variables had significant effects: conditions in which the teacher and learner were more proximal ( p  = .001), more intimate ( p  = .003), and more directly related ( p  = .001) had lower rates of obedient responding. Finally, the Setting variable, “low status”, was unrelated to obedience ( p  = .301).

Although the six code groupings – learner, teacher, experimenter, teacher-learner relation, experimenter-teacher relation, and setting properties – contain different numbers of codes, the relative magnitude of their effects offers some insight into the importance of these property types within the set of conditions that Milgram employed. Table 6 presents Nagelkerke R 2 values for each set of codes, which suggest that three property types - Experimenter, Teacher-Learner relation, and Teacher - are pre-eminent determinants of obedience rates across Milgram's 21 study conditions.

Our analysis indicates that many properties of Milgram's study conditions were associated with rates of obedient responding. These eight properties are diverse, pertaining to aspects of two of the three roles in the study – Teacher and Experimenter – as well as to both of the relationships between roles: Teacher-Experimenter and Teacher-Learner. Although our study brackets off the issue of how obedience within the Milgram study should be understood and takes no theoretical position on that issue, the number and diversity of these properties present a challenge for any encompassing account of obedience in the Milgram paradigm.

The significant predictors of obedience in our analysis are clearly disparate. The most powerful effects, in decreasing order, are the Experimenter's non-directiveness, the Teachers' group pressure to disobey, the Teacher-Learner relation's proximity and indirectness, the Teacher-Experimenter relation's distance, the Teacher-Learner relation's intimacy, and the Experimenter's illegitimacy and inconsistency. Several of these effects are well-established within the literature on the Milgram study, such as proximity, group pressure to disobey, and distance between Experimenter and Teacher. Others have been largely overlooked.

For example, few of the textbooks whose coverage was sampled in Figure 1 recognized the importance of the Experimenter's directiveness vs. non-directiveness, failing to note the very low levels of obedience in the “Carte blanche” and “Group choice” conditions. Proceeding to the 450 V shock rarely occurs if the authority figure does not give explicit commands to escalate the shocks, even if pressure to escalate is coming from fellow teachers (i.e., in the “Group choice” condition). Few textbooks noted the role of inconsistency among Experimenters in reducing obedience, neglecting to cite the “Good experimenter/bad experimenter” condition, where a benign experimenter almost completely overrode the power of the standard “bad” experimenter to induce compliance. No textbooks in our sample recognized the role of the indirectness of the relation between Teacher and Learner, failing to mention the “Non-trigger position” condition and its very high rates of obedience. Similarly, no textbooks acknowledged how the intimacy of the relationship between Teacher and Learner reduces obedience. Participants shocked learners with whom they had an existing social bond at less than one quarter the rate as when the learners were strangers. These four factors deserve greater attention in commentaries on Milgram's work.

Just as some factors that significantly predict obedience have been overlooked, other well-publicized factors were not significant predictors in our analysis or had unexpected effects. In particular, the analysis of textbook coverage shows that Milgram's replication of his study in Bridgeport, and his examination of the role of experimenter legitimacy through the “Peer authority” condition, attract substantial attention. However, the status of the setting was not associated with obedience in our systematic analysis of the 21 conditions, with levels similar regardless of the prestige of the experimental situation. Moreover, the illegitimacy of the authority was associated with higher obedience levels. Although this finding may be unreliable, it clearly contradicts the expectation that more legitimate authorities generate greater obedience in the Milgram paradigm. Although obedience was low (20%) in the “Peer authority” condition, our analysis suggests that this was probably due to the non-directive instruction in that condition rather than to the illegitimacy of the person proposing the shock levels (i.e., a peer rather than an identified researcher). In “Teacher in charge”, another condition where a peer was drafted into the authority role, obedience rates were a relatively high 55%, challenging the standard interpretation that peers, as illegitimate authorities, are not obeyed. In short, the importance of the prestige of the situation and the legitimacy of the authority may have been over-estimated in past interpretations of Milgram's work.

Such interpretations have often distinguished two components of the experimental situation. On the one hand, the Experimenter exerts a more or less authoritative influence on the Teacher, and on the other, the Learner generates more or less compassion or moral concern in that Teacher. The relative strength of these two influences is taken to determine rates of obedience, whether it is understood in terms of the Teacher's relative identification with Experimenter and Learner [19] or “tuning them in (or out)” [15] . Milgram's conditions cannot definitively answer which of these two components is the more important determinant of obedience in any general sense, as it may not comprehensively manipulate the range of properties that might capture the components or manipulate them in equally powerful ways.

Nevertheless, our analysis indicates that within the confines of 21 of Milgram's conditions, the two components are fairly similar in strength. As Table 4 shows, properties on the Experimenter side of the Teacher (i.e., Experimenter and Teacher-Experimenter relations) have similar overall predictive power as those on the Learner side (i.e., Learner and Teacher-Learner relations), with a small advantage to the Experimenter side. This general finding implies that any interpretation of the Milgram study that neglects one component or the other – that sees the study exclusively through the lens of the Experimenter's influence on the Teacher or the Teacher's disengagement from the Learner, for example – must be incomplete.

One limitation of our analysis is that by focusing on objective properties of the experimental situation it neglects the participant's interpretation of that situation and their understanding of the significance of their behavior. The ambiguity of the situation and apparent skepticism about the experimental set up among many participants [7] all raise questions about how ‘obedience’ – and variations in it across conditions – should be understood within the Milgram paradigm. For example, Milgram's own notes suggest that some conditions were difficult for participants to take seriously. Their degree of belief or disbelief, unmeasured in our analysis, may well have altered the meaning and extent of their ‘obedient’ responding. A second, unavoidable limitation of our analysis is that it could not capture some objective properties of the experimental situation. As Gibson [20] and Perry [7] have shown, the experimenter frequently did not adhere to the published details of the study protocol. Tape recordings show, for example, that he often went beyond the standard ‘four prods’ in ways that are likely to have influenced the delivery of shocks by participants.

Although it is over five decades old the Milgram study is of more than historical significance. Although its meanings remain elusive and continue to generate disagreement, stimulated by new theoretical perspectives and by revelations of methodological weaknesses, attempts to clarify what the study teaches us continue to be important. Whether or not it illuminates the influences on obedience in any general sense, we believe that our analysis helps to extract and systematize some of the patterns within Milgram's complex set of findings. These patterns may help to guide and constrain future interpretations of his study.

Funding Statement

The authors have no support or funding to report.

• Social Emotions
• Emotional Psychology

Milgram's Experiment: Obedience or Emotional Adaptation on Empathy Emotional Scale?

• CC BY-SA 4.0

• HLG Memorial Hospital, India, Asansol

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• Milgram experiment on obedience

Social Psychology: reading informational text; The Milgram Experiment 9

Milgram's Experiment on Obedience

• In 1963, Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that explored humans’ obedience to authority figures. The findings shocked the world and continue to be discussed today. The Milgram studies were conducted in order to study the willingness of participants—average everyday Americans—to obey authority figures who instructed them to perform behaviors that conflicted with their personal beliefs and morals. As you can probably imagine, it might be hard to recruit participants when that's what you're trying to study. In order to keep the participants from finding out what he was actually trying to look at, Milgram used deception. He started by posting ads looking for people to participate in a study about “learning and memory”. The researchers really tried to make it a point to recruit average, everyday people.
• When recruits arrived at the lab, they were told that they were going to be participating in a study that was trying to look at the effects of punishment on learning—do people learn best after they've been punished for making a mistake? There were two participants involved in the study, and they randomly decided by picking out of a hat who was going to play the role of teacher and who was going to play the role of the learner. In reality, one of the participants was actually a confederate, meaning that they were working with the experimenter and were secretly in on the point of the study. Choosing the roles out of a hat wasn't actually random in this case because it was rigged in such a way that the actual participant always got the teacher role and the confederates always got the learner role.
• While the teacher was watching, the experimenter hooked the learner up to a number of electrodes, and they were both told that the teacher was going to teach the learner a number of word pairs, and that the learner would be shocked whenever they gave the wrong answer. In some versions of the study, the person playing the learner noted that they were worried about the experiment because they had a heart condition, so they were worried about the shocks, at which point the experimenter would explain to them not to worry, that the shocks would be painful but not dangerous. The teacher was then taken to a different room where they couldn't see the learner. They had no visual contact with them. And they were sat in front of a box of switches that they were told was a shock box. The first switch was labeled 15 volts, and the switches increased at 15 volt increments until it reached 450 volts. Along with an indication of voltage, there were also labels that went along with the switches: they went from “slight shock” to “moderate shock” to “strong shock” and then things like “very strong shock” and “intense shock” and “extremely intense shock,” and then kind of troublingly, a label that noted that the switches would give a “severe shock” and the warning “DANGER XXX.”
• The teacher was instructed to read a long list of word pairs to the learner, and then when they were finished, to go back and read the first word of each pair, and then offer four possible pair words. Of those possible four pair words, the learner would indicate what they thought the answer was by pressing a button, and this was displayed on a screen to the teacher. Whenever the learner made an error, the teacher was instructed to give them a shock at increasing increments. The first wrong answer got a shock of 15 volts, the second one 30 volts, etcetera. And just so you're aware, even though the teacher thought that they were giving the learner shocks, no actual shocks were given. But, of course, it was really important that the teacher really thought that the punishment was being administered.
• After giving a number of correct answers, the participants seemingly started giving incorrect ones. And of course, the pattern of correct and incorrect answers that the learner was given was determined by the experimenter well beforehand. The first couple of shocks really didn't elicit that much of a reaction. The learner would kind of gasp when they happened, but nothing more than that. However, after several increasing shocks, the learner would start to pound on the wall and cry out in pain. Eventually, they would start to complain about their heart condition, saying things like "let me out, my heart is bothering me, let me out.” And as the shocks increased, they would continue to yell and scream that they wanted to quit. And after this, after a certain point, all responses from the learner would cease and there would only be silence from the other room. If at any point during the study, the participant playing the role of the teacher wanted to check on the other participant, or stop the experiment, or even just looked back at the experimenter for guidance to see what they should do, they were told things like “please continue” and “the experiment requires that you continue,” And even “you have no other choice, you must go on.” The experiment came to an end after either four verbal protests from the teacher, from the participant, or after they had given the final shock of 450 volts to the silent learner three times.
• Before he started his experiment, Milgram had asked a number of professors and psychology students and clinical psychologists whether or not people would obey the commands of the experimenter. They overwhelmingly said that people would not, that most of them would stop when the learner protested, and that very, very few people would shock all the way, and that those that did were probably psychopaths. When the results of the study came out, they were actually really disturbing because 65% of participants shocked all the way. 65%. And to be clear, those participants didn't do so without feeling. They had protested and they were sweating, and they were trembling, but they still obeyed the commands of the experimenter and shocked to 450 volts. In the versions of the experiment where the learner claimed to have a heart condition, and specifically claimed that the shocks were hurting their heart, full compliance did drop, but not by much. It dropped to 63%.
• Again, these were everyday, average Americans who heard the cries of people they were tormenting and continued with the task. I want to end with a quote from Milgram. It's kind of a long quote, but I think that it's really important and really sums up the results of the study. He wrote: “I set up a simple experiment at Yale to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any length on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their parts, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work became patently clear, and they were asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

Practice question

• (Choice A)   that Milgram proved his theory that most people are willing to set aside their morals when prompted by authority A that Milgram proved his theory that most people are willing to set aside their morals when prompted by authority
• (Choice B)   that Milgram and his team needed to deceive the participants in order to run the experiment B that Milgram and his team needed to deceive the participants in order to run the experiment
• (Choice C)   that if “learners” in the study appeared too smart, the participants would be hesitant to shock them C that if “learners” in the study appeared too smart, the participants would be hesitant to shock them
• (Choice D)   that it’s unethical for psychologists to conceal their research methods from volunteers who take part in their studies D that it’s unethical for psychologists to conceal their research methods from volunteers who take part in their studies

The Milgram Experiment: Method, Results, Replicas

He Milgram experiment Were a series of tests that served to study obedience to authority.

The precursor of this series of experiments was the social psychologist Stanley Milgram (New York, 1933-1984) that belonged to Yale University and made them around the 60s, after the massive crimes that characterized the Nazi holocaust of World War II.

Specifically, in 1961 Milgram wondered if all the participants in these crimes acted motu proprio or, they did it because they were following orders. All these matters came to Milgram following the sentence of Adolf Eichmamn (Nazi lieutenant colonel) sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.

Milgram intended to evaluate whether people are willing to obey orders simply because they were imposed by a boss or superior. What is really controversial about these experiments is that these orders meant doing harm to the other person and even putting the life of the other into play.

Finally, Milgram published in 1963 a study in the magazine Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology Under the title 'Obedience Behavior Study' and a decade later, in 1974 he summarized and published all of these experiments in his book 'Obedience to Authority'. An experimental point of view.

Next, we will know the details of the experiment, as well as the results obtained and the conclusions they found after further research and analysis.

You may also like This list of experiments in the history of psychology .

Milgram Method

The work team of Professor Milgram, through newspaper ads New Haven , Requested volunteers. This announcement was really a hoax because, really, they were invited to participate in a study of memory and learning that supposedly was being done from their department.

The sample consisted of 40 men between 20 and 50 years of different social groups and with different levels of education. These included people who had just finished primary school and others had obtained their doctorate. All of them received four dollars (this corresponds to about $ 28 today) plus travel and subsistence expenses.

These participants were explained that within the research there were three roles: the researcher (Milgram himself or one of his colleagues, dressed in a white coat and acting with certain airs of superiority), the teacher and the student.

Participants were received in pairs, one volunteer and the other part of the Milgram team. Upon receiving them, they were explained that the department was studying the relationship between memory and learning.

Then, through a series of trick drawings, all the volunteer participants were given the role of teacher, since the student roles were played by Milgram's collaborators, they pretended that they had taken that place in the draw.

Then they would come in pairs in the laboratory. That is, a teacher and a student. The room was divided by a glass module and each of them sat on one side. The student sat in a chair that resembled the electric chair and, in addition, was tied in order to prevent it from moving too much.

Also, electrodes were placed all over his body through which he would receive the discharges and was anointed with cream so that he would not suffer burns. Also, he was informed that the discharges could cause a deep pain, but that would not leave lasting sequels, nor irreversible damages.

All this was explained to the student, the teacher in front and listening to all this information.

After these explanations, the teacher took a seat in a chair that had a control panel in which appeared the different loads that could send to the student's chair. To begin with, as a test, both received a real discharge of 45 volts. In this way, the researchers ensured that teachers would know what students would feel when receiving a download.

The experiment was about the teacher asking the student a series of questions. If it failed, the teacher should press a discharge and increase the intensity of the same as the student increased the number of failures.

The machine that controlled the discharges had 30 keys ordered from minor to major discharge. It started with 15 volts and, summing 15 at 15 volts, ended up with the maximum voltage: 450 volts. In addition, each of them had a label in which appeared the intensity of the discharge. For example, in the first one put"light discharge"and the one of greater intensity (450 volts) appeared"danger: severe discharge".

When the investigator finished explaining to the teacher the whole mechanism and functioning of the test, it offered him a list with pairs of words that the teacher should ask the student.

The teacher then read the question to the student and then listed four possible answers. The student had to press one of the four buttons within his reach. If the answer was correct, the teacher had to move on to the next one. Otherwise, you should manage a download that would increase in intensity based on the number of incorrect answers.

What really happened is that the teacher thought that he was administering downloads to the student when in fact, the pain reaction of this one was totally simulated, for that they had been chosen the collaborators of Milgram.

As the teacher increased the charge of volts, the student began to scream and complain, even shouting that they were people suffering from heart disease and asked to end the experiment. When the 270 volts were reached, they screamed in agony and if they reached the 300 volt charge, the pupils pretended to be in a state before the coma. Actually, all these screams were not happening, they were recordings.

When they reached the 75-volt button, teachers began to be nervous about their students' complaints and showed a strong interest in completing the experiment, although the researcher showed himself to be authoritarian and forced them to continue with the test.

When they reached 135 volts, it was common for teachers to stop and question the researcher the actual purpose of the experiment. Some of them wanted to stop the test and even insisted that they were willing to give back the money they had been offered to participate.

If the teacher wanted to end the test, the investigator orders it to continue. The answers that they had to give by order were the following:

• "Go on, please!"
• "The experiment needs to continue!"
• "It is absolutely essential that you continue!"
• "You have no choice! It must continue!"

If after the latter, the teacher refused to continue the test, the experiment was over.

In other cases, teachers continued to assert that they were not held responsible for the consequences that discharges might have on their students. There were even some responses of nervous laughter to the screams of pain and suffering of the students caused by the high load of the discharge.

The experiment could also end if the master had managed to handle the maximum load and pressed the button up to three times.

Prior to the completion of the experiments, Milgram dared to expose the results that he and his team would obtain. They estimated that the average voltage of downloads would be about 130 volts and that the teacher's obedience to the investigator would be 0%. Also, they contemplated the possibility that among the volunteer participants there was some sadist who was able to apply the button of greater voltage.

The surprise that took Milgram and all his equipment was to verify that 65% of the teachers got to apply up to 450 volts to their students, although some of them did not seem to feel comfortable doing it.

Also, it was curious the fact that none of them stopped before the 300 volts since, at this moment, the student showed that it began to lose his life.

Apparently, the behavior of the volunteer participants did not reveal that they were sadistic people since in the administration of the voltage loads they showed concern for what they were doing and, in addition, they were nervous (they were removed, they nailed the flesh , etc).

At the end of the experiment, the teachers were informed that, in fact, the students were actors and that they had not suffered any damage. The researchers said that the teachers were relieved when they told him. They were also asked if they were aware of the pain they had caused in students and on a scale of 1 to 14, with 14 being the highest level of pain, the mean was at level 13.

The studies that were carried out later and the exhaustive analysis of the different profiles of all participants showed that the teachers whose students were of a similar social context stopped the experiment.

Replicas of the experiment

In order to know if the results obtained would be replicated, Milgram and his team decided to repeat the experiment in other countries and with different people.

On this occasion, another of the variables they studied was the distance between the teacher and the student. The results showed that the more distant the pupil of the teacher was, the higher the researcher's obedience index.

In other cases, the administration of the discharge was through the teacher taking the student's hand and approaching a plate.

In these cases, 30% of participants reached the final level of the discharge, compared to 40% who did so under other circumstances. Although the percentage is lower, this data is equally surprising since in this situation is added the variable that the teacher must have physical contact with the student so that the student receives the discharge.

Under other circumstances studied, the participant would receive support from a partner who would refuse to continue the experiment. There was a 10% decrease in obedience.

When that partner, instead of refusing, showed support to the researcher, a percentage of 93% of teachers who got to use the 450 volts were reached.

Other variables that were studied in the replicates of the experiment were on the presence of two experimenters and when they gave opposite orders. In these cases, obedience was nil. In the event that the principal investigator left the room and left a colleague, there was also a 20% decrease in the level of teacher obedience.

The gender variable was also considered and, when comparing the levels of obedience between men and women, it was established that there were no significant differences.

Subsequent reactions

Milgram himself and his team were totally surprised by the results. At that time, ethics were questioned in scientific experimentation due to the high levels of emotional tension experienced by the participants, although the team argued that it was they who decided to continue.

Today, such an experiment would be almost impossible to carry out and would be considered immoral because they made participants believe that the lives of people were at stake, in addition to giving false slogans to the participants.

Indeed, after this series of experiments, the scientific community put a series of norms and ethical criteria to avoid that this type of research could be reopened.

In the multiple questionnaires that were administered to the participants, at the end, they were asked about their level of satisfaction for having participated in the experiment. In fact, 84% of them said they were very happy after participating. In addition, many of them showed their gratitude to the own Milgram.

After the experiments, Milgram created a documentary film in which he demonstrated the experiment and the results obtained. Today it is almost impossible to find one of these copies.

Explanations

Milgram's own explanation of the astonishing results obtained from his studies is that the subjects entered a state that he called the"agent state."

This state was characterized by the fact that individuals (in this case, teachers) perceived themselves as agents of an authority which they themselves had attributed as legitimate.

People are typically considered autonomous and proactive in many situations and contexts, but when they enter a hierarchical structure, they tend to change their perception of themselves. Among other things, they can discharge responsibility for their actions on people with a higher rank.

Although these subjects had agreed to participate voluntarily, they had easy to identify which was the legitimate authority: the investigators. These, besides being authoritarian, wore a white coat. All these characteristics can trigger obedience to authority.

In addition, there are other factors that help explain the results. One was the orders the researchers told the teachers when they refused to continue the experiment. These seemed to indicate to the teachers that the correct thing at that moment was to continue with the experiment in spite of the pain that could be provoking.

Also, all these participants (like most individuals) had social norms Who talk about not being hurt others. Also, that they should be helped when they need it. When under the situation of the experiment, they felt a great dilemma on whether to continue, or not, with the anxiety that brought them.

Another mechanism that intervenes is to come to think if the alleged victim, the student, deserves the downloads he is receiving.

If a person comes to think that the victim deserves such pain, it will help alleviate the suffering caused by the discharge.

There may also be a tendency to blame the victim and this will contribute to the person feeling more protected.

• [Links] The dangers of obedience. The Milgram experiment. Psicopedia.org. Website: psicopedia.org.
• The Milgram Experiment: Obedience to Authority. Explorable. Website: explorable.com.
• Encyclopedia Free in Spanish. The Milgram experiment. Website: encyclopedia.us.es.
• Milgram, Stanley. (1963). "Behavioral Study of Obedience". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67, 371-378.

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Why (almost) everything you know about Milgram is wrong

Ella Rhodes reports from a Stephen Reicher keynote at the Society's Annual Conference in Nottingham.

15 May 2018

Standing in front of a keen psychology audience, Stephen Reicher (University of St Andrews) said he felt like he was at a primary school to tell children why Santa wasn't real. But, in fact, his and Alexander Haslam's extensive research on the 60s researcher Stanley Milgram has only made the man, and his electric shock box, ever-more interesting.

Milgram's 1961 experiments into obedience set out to answer a question that we've been asking for centuries – what makes normal individuals do monstrous things? Milgram's participants were told the experiments were a study of punishment and its effects on learning – they acted as 'teachers' giving electric shocks to 'learners' when they misremembered the second word from a list of word pairs.

Participants were in a separate room to the learners – who, in reality, were confederates of Milgram and received no shocks – but could overhear their shouts of pain as the shocks increased in power. These sessions were overseen by a white-coated experimenter who would coax any struggling participants to continue with the experiment.

Prior to this work Milgram asked colleagues how many people would give a shock of 300 volts or more, and many said only true psychopaths would do so. But in his first baseline study of 40 people, 26 went all the way to 450 volts and beyond – in other words two out of three people would kill someone for making an error in a learning experiment.

From this work Milgram developed a theory that, during obedience, people adopt an agentic state seeing themselves as instruments to carry out the will of another and feel little or no responsibility for their actions. However – and it's a rather big however – there are some key elements from Milgram's studies which undermine the theories he developed from them.

First, while his baseline study would back up the agentic state theory he actually did around 30 studies and obedience varied between 0 and 100 per cent… overall 58 per cent of people actually disobeyed the pushy experimenter. How can we understand this variability, Reicher asked, if the agentic state is true?

Second, when we consider the goings-on during the actual experiment and look at the experimenter's four prods to encourage participants to continue, they reveal that people really do not like following orders. The four prods used were: 'please continue', 'the experiment requires you to continue', 'It's essential you continue' and 'you have no other choice – you must go on'. Reicher pointed out that only the final one of these phrases is a direct order, and in fact none of Milgram's participants continued with the study after hearing this order. As Reicher said – Milgram's own research here is emphatically not showing that people have a tendency to obey orders.

Finally, Milgram's work did not account for the role of participants hearing the learner's voice shouting in pain. While agentic state theory would suggest we are bound into the voice of the experimenter, deferentially following orders, this is not revealed in Milgram's own archived materials – Reicher and Haslam found 40 per cent of participants dropped out when the learner spoke for the first time and mentioned the pain he was in.

All of this flies in the face of the overriding narrative Milgram established after his experiments of obedient people in agentic states blindly following orders. While his findings are in no way artificial, Reicher said, he could have reached the conclusion that people aren't programmed to take orders but rather make choices over which 'voice' to listen to in a given situation, which can vary depending on an individual's relative identification. 

Find much more about Milgram and his studies in our archive , including this from Reicher and Haslam, and an exploration of rhetoric and resistance in the studies.

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How Would People Behave in Milgram’s Experiment Today?

Photo from the Milgram Experiment.

More than fifty years ago, then Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the famous—or infamous—experiments on destructive obedience that have come to be known as “Milgram’s shocking experiments” (pun usually intended). Milgram began his experiments in July 1961, the same month that the trial of Adolf Eichmann—the German bureaucrat responsible for transporting Jews to the extermination camps during the Holocaust—concluded in Jerusalem. The trial was made famous by the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s reports, later published in book form as Eichmann in Jerusalem . Arendt claimed that Eichmann was a colorless bureaucrat who blandly followed orders without much thought for the consequences, and whose obedient behavior demonstrated the “banality of evil.”

Milgram himself was Jewish, and his original question was whether nations other than Germany would differ in their degrees of conformity to authority. He assumed that the citizens of America, home of rugged individualism and apple pie, would display much lower levels of conformity when commanded by authorities to engage in behavior that might harm others. His Yale experiments were designed to set a national baseline.

Half of a century after Milgram probed the nature of destructive obedience to authority, we are faced with the unsettling question: What would citizens do today?

The Original Experiment

In Milgram’s original experiment, participants took part in what they thought was a “learning task.” This task was designed to investigate how punishment—in this case in the form of electric shocks—affected learning. Volunteers thought they were participating in pairs, but their partner was in fact a confederate of the experimenter. A draw to determine who would be the “teacher” and who would be the “learner” was rigged; the true volunteer always ended up as the teacher and the confederate as learner.

The pairs were moved into separate rooms, connected by a microphone. The teacher read aloud a series of word pairs, such as “red–hammer,” which the learner was instructed to memorize. The teacher then read the target word (red), and the learner was to select the original paired word from four alternatives (ocean, fan, hammer, glue).

Did Milgram’s experiment demonstrate that humans have a universal propensity to destructive obedience or that they are merely products of their cultural moment?

If the learner erred, the teacher was instructed to deliver an electric shock as punishment, increasing the shock by 15-volt increments with each successive error. Although the teacher could not see the learner in the adjacent room, he could hear his responses to the shocks as well as to the questions. According to a prearranged script, at 75 volts, the learner started to scream; from 150 volts to 330 volts, he protested with increasing intensity, complaining that his heart was bothering him; at 330 volts, he absolutely refused to go on. After that the teacher’s questions were met by silence. Whenever the teacher hesitated, the experimenter pressed the teacher to continue, insisting that the “the experiment requires that you continue” and reminding him that “although the shocks may be painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage.”

Milgram was horrified by the results of the experiment . In the “remote condition” version of the experiment described above, 65 percent of the subjects (26 out of 40) continued to inflict shocks right up to the 450-volt level, despite the learner’s screams, protests, and, at the 330-volt level, disturbing silence. Moreover, once participants had reached 450 volts, they obeyed the experimenter’s instruction to deliver 450-volt shocks when the subject continued to fail to respond.

Putting Milgram’s Work in Context

Milgram’s experiment became the subject of a host of moral and methodological critiques in the 1960s. These became somewhat moot with the publication of the American Psychological Association’s ethical principles of research with human subjects in 1973 and the restrictions on the use of human subjects included in the National Research Act of 1974, which effectively precluded psychologists from conducting experiments that, like Milgram’s, were likely to cause serious distress to subjects. This was undoubtedly a good thing for experimental subjects, but it also blocked attempts to answer a question that many were asking: Did Milgram’s experiment demonstrate that humans have a universal propensity to destructive obedience or that they are merely products of their cultural moment?

Cross-cultural studies at the time provided a partial answer. The U.S. mean obedience rate of 60.94 percent was not significantly different from the foreign mean obedience rate of 65.94 percent, although there was wide variation in the results (rates ranged from 31 to 91 percent in the U.S. and from 28 to 87.5 percent in foreign studies) and design of the studies. However, a historical question remained: Would subjects today still display the same levels of destructive obedience as the subjects of fifty years ago?

There are grounds to believe they would not. In the 1950s, psychologists and the general public were shocked by the results of Solomon Asch’s experiments on conformity . In a series of line-judgement studies, subjects were asked to decide which of three comparison lines matched a target line. Crucially, these judgements were made in a social context, among other participants. Only one of the subjects in the experiment was a naive subject, while the other six were confederates of the experimenter instructed to give incorrect answers. When they gave answers that were incorrect, and seemed plainly incorrect to the naive subjects, about one-third of the naive subjects gave answers that conformed with the majority. In other words, people were happy to ignore the evidence before their eyes in order to conform to the group consensus.

For some observers, these results threatened America’s image as the land of individualism and autonomy. Yet in the 1980s, replications of Asch’s experiment failed to detect even minimal levels of conformity, suggesting that Asch’s results were a child of 1950s, the age of “other-directed” people made famous by David Reisman in his 1950 work The Lonely Crowd . Might the same failure to replicate be true today if people faced Milgram’s experiment anew?

Understanding Milgram’s Work Today

Although full replications of Milgram’s experiment are precluded in the United States because of ethical and legal constraints on experimenters, there have been replications attempted in other countries, and attempts by U.S. experimenters to sidestep these constraints.

A replication conducted by Dariusz Dolinski and colleagues in 2015 generated levels of obedience higher than the original Milgram experiment , although the study may be criticized because it employed lower levels of shock.

More intriguing was the 2009 replication by Jerry Burger, who found an ingenious way of navigating the ethical concerns about Milgram’s original experiment . Burger noted that in the original experiment 79 percent of subjects who continued after the 150 volts—after the learner’s first screams—continued all the way to the end of the scale, at 450 volts. Assuming that the same would be true of subjects today, Burger determined how many were willing to deliver shocks beyond the 150-volt level, at which point the experiment was discontinued.

Given social support, most subjects refused to continue to administer shocks, suggesting that social solidarity serves as a kind of a defense against destructive obedience to authority.

About 70 percent were willing to continue the experiment at this point, suggesting that subjects remain just as compliant in the 21st century. Nonetheless, Burger’s study was based upon a questionable assumption, namely that 150-volt compliance has remained a reliable predictor of 450-volt compliance. Subjects today might be willing to go a bit beyond 150 volts, but perhaps not to the far end of the scale (after learners demand that the experiment be discontinued etc.). In fact, this assumption begs the critical question at issue.

However, French television came to the rescue. One game show replicated Milgram’s experiment , with the game show host as the authority and the “questioner” as the subject. In a study reported in the 2012 European Review of Applied Psychology , J.-L. Beauvois and colleagues replicated Milgram’s voice feedback condition , with identical props, instructions, and scripted learner responses and host prods. One might question whether a game show host has as much authority as a scientific experimenter, but whatever authority they had managed to elicit levels of obedience equivalent to Milgram’s original experiment (in fact somewhat higher, 81 percent as opposed to the original 65 percent). It would seem that at least French nationals are as compliant today as Milgram’s original subjects in the 1960s.

In fact, the replication suggests a darker picture. One of the optimistic findings of the original Milgram experiment was his condition 7, in which there were three teachers, two of whom (both confederates of the experimenter) defied the experimenter. Given this social support, most subjects refused to continue to administer shocks, suggesting that social solidarity serves as a kind of a defense against destructive obedience to authority. Unfortunately, this did not occur in the French replication, in which the production assistant protested about the immorality of the procedure with virtually no effect on levels of obedience. And unfortunately, not in the Burger study either: Burger found that the intervention of an accomplice who refused to continue had no effect on the levels of obedience. So it may be that we are in fact more compliant today than Milgram’s original subjects, unmoved by social support. A dark thought for our dark times.

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