Just after the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem occurred, a psychologist at Yale University decided to conduct an experiment on young adult males who attended Yale. His name was Stanley Milgram and his experiment is known in Psychology as the "Milgram Experiment." The purpose of his experiment was to determine at what cost is a person willing to obey an authority figure even if in so doing would harm others. His study began as follows:
Preparation of the Stanley Milgram Experiment
The psychologist Stanley Milgram created an electric ‘shock generator’ with 30 switches. The switch was marked clearly in 15 volt increments, ranging from 15 to 450 volts.
He also placed labels indicating the shock level, such as ‘Moderate’ (75-120 Volts) and ‘Strong’ (135-180 Volts). The switches 375-420 Volts were marked ‘Danger: Severe Shock’ and the two highest levels 435-450, was marked ‘XXX’.
The ‘shock generator’ was in fact phony and would only produce sound when the switches were pressed.
40 subjects (males) were recruited via mail and a newspaper ad. They thought they were going to participate in an experiment about ‘memory and learning’.
In the test, each subject was informed clearly that their payment was for showing up, and they could keep the payment “no matter what happens after they arrive[d]”.
Next, the subject met an ‘experimenter’, the person leading the experiment, and another person told to be another subject. The other subject was in fact a confederate acting as a subject. He was a 47 year old male accountant.
The two subjects (the real subject and the con-subject) drew slips of paper to indicate who was going to be a ‘teacher’ and who was going to be a ‘learner’. The lottery was in fact a set-up, and the real subject would always get the role of ‘the teacher’.
The teacher saw that the learner was strapped to a chair and electrodes were attached. The subject was then seated in another room in front of the shock generator, unable to see the learner.
Research Question
The Stanley Milgram Experiment aimed at getting an answer to the question:
“For how long will someone continue to give shocks to another person if they are told to do so, even if they thought they could be seriously hurt?” (the dependent variable)
Remember that they had met the other person, a likable stranger, and that they thought that it could very well be them who were in the learner-position receiving shocks.
The Experiment
The subject was instructed to teach word-pairs to the learner. When the learner made a mistake, the subject was instructed to punish the learner by giving him a shock, 15 volts higher for each mistake.
The learner never received the shocks, but pre-taped audio was triggered when a shock-switch was pressed.
If the experimenter, seated in the same room, was contacted, the experimenter would answer with predefined ‘prods’ (“Please continue”, “Please go on”, “The experiment requires that you go on”, “It is absolutely essential that you continue”, “You have no other choice, you must go on”), starting with the mild prods, and making it more authoritarian for each time the subject contacted the experimenter.
If the subject asked who was responsible if anything would happen to the learner, the experimenter answered “I am responsible”. This gave the subject a relief and many continued.
Results
During the Stanley Milgram Experiment, many subjects showed signs of tension. 3 subjects had “full-blown, uncontrollable seizures”.
Although most subjects were uncomfortable doing it, all 40 subjects obeyed up to 300 volts.
25 of the 40 subjects continued to complete to give shocks until the maximum level of 450 volts was reached.
Conclusion - Obedience to Authority
Before the Stanley Milgram Experiment, experts thought that about 1-3 % of the subjects would not stop giving shocks. They thought that you’d have to be pathological or a psychopath to do so.
Still, 65 % never stopped giving shocks. None stopped when the learner said he had heart-trouble. How could that be? We now believe that it has to do with our almost innate behavior that we should do as told, especially from authority persons.
Our predictable failings cause us to make serious errors in judgment. Following World War 2, social psychologists attempted to understand how it was that German soldiers were induced to abandon morality and human empathy in order to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust. What they discovered, to everyone's surprise and dismay, was that the majority of people can be persuaded to do almost anything.
The first notable experiments were done by Swarthmore psychologist, Solomon Asch. Asch wanted to discover whether people's tendency to agree with their peers was stronger than their tendency toward independent thought and rational judgment. In his study, the aim was to see whether the subject would rely on his or her own judgment, or go along with the group. As it turned out, 70% of the subjects caved in to group pressure. The conclusion was that most human beings, under conditions that are hardly severe, will follow the crowd, even when the crowd is CLEARLY WRONG!
Stanley Milgram, a former student of Asch, took this research a step further. Milgram wanted to see how much influence an authority figure could wield over the average person. In his most famous experiment, subjects were put in an artificial situation (they believed it was real) in which an authority figure, a scientist in a white lab coat, instructed them to inflict pain on another person. Yet 65% of the subjects followed the instructions given. It is important to note that Milgram selected subjects from all occupations and from various social backgrounds. They were not hardened criminals, soldiers, or mentally deranged. They were average people. Yet the Milgram experiments showed that most people's tendency to trust and obey authority is so strong that they will shed all personal responsibility, moral training, or creative volition for the sake of following orders.
Together, the Milgram and Asch experiments explain much about how societies function. They tell us we have a natural tendency to let authorities think for us, to let them tell us what is true, or the best course of action. Our predisposition toward conformity tends to bring other group members on board.
Most of what we do in life involves cooperating with others. A group can work more effectively if its members see things the same way. Putting some people in charge because they have greater knowledge or skill, or because everyone trusts their judgment, can help a group achieve certain goals more effectively. Problems arise when people's propensity to conform and to respect authority prevent a society form dealing effectively with a crisis. Fortunately, not everyone has a natural inclination to follow authority. People who are free-thinkers tend to dislike authority, are interested in new ideas and prefer to seek new, creative solutions.
Building on the work of Asch and Milgram, social psychologist, Irving L. Janis wrote a book called "Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes." He concludes that closed-mindedness, over-confidence, and pressure within the group to conform can lead to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment which he calls groupthink. So how do we overcome these psychological barriers? Fortunately there are some individuals that are open-minded enough to resist the pressure to conform and are duly critical of authority. Being autonomous helps to feel less pressure because their is no identification with the crowd, so we may then reach the emotional maturity that renders us less vulnerable to groupthink or the herd. We can become better equipped to think for ourselves and make good decisions.
At the Nuremberg Trials, all but one of the top ranking Nazis pled not guilty because they were just "following orders". All of those who pled guilty were hung except Georing who took cyanide. The only Nazi who pled guilty was Albert Speer. His sentence was prison for several years and while in prison he wrote the book "Inside the Third Reich." It seems that people who say they were "following orders" are the ones who want to abdicate their responsibility onto someone else so they will not be directly responsible for their own lives and the choices they make.
Here is a link for further research.
At the Nuremberg Trials, all but one of the top ranking Nazis pled not guilty because they were just "following orders". All of those who pled guilty were hung except Georing who took cyanide. The only Nazi who pled guilty was Albert Speer. His sentence was prison for several years and while in prison he wrote the book "Inside the Third Reich." It seems that people who say they were "following orders" are the ones who want to abdicate their responsibility onto someone else so they will not be directly responsible for their own lives and the choices they make.
Here is a link for further research.