The Milgram Experiment

2024年1月24日发(作者：雪佛兰7座suv科帕奇报价)

The Milgram Experiment

One of the most famous studies of obedience in psychology was

carried out by Stanley Milgram (1963).

Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an

experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience to authority

and personal conscience.

He 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 of 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).

Milgram\'s Experiment

Aim:

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.

Procedure:

Volunteers were recruited for a lab 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, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter

(Milgram). They drew straws to determine their roles – leaner or

teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate always ended

to the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a grey 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 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 4 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.

Results:

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:

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.”

Milgrams\' Agency Theory

Milgram (1974) explained the behavior of his participants by

suggesting that people actually 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 in order for a

person to enter the agentic state:

1. The person giving the orders is perceived as being qualified to

direct other people?s behavior. That is, they are seen as

legitimate.

2. The person being ordered about is able to believe that the

authority will accept responsibility for what happens.

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.

Milgram Experiment Variations

The Milgram experiment was carried out many times whereby

Milgram 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).

In total 636 participants have been tested in 18 different variation

studies.

Change of Location

Condition

?

Two Teacher Condition

?

?

?

The experiment was

moved to a set of run

down offices rather than

the impressive Yale

University.

Obedience dropped to

47.5%.

This suggests that status

of location effects

obedience.

?

?

When there is less personal

responsibility obedience

increases.

When participants could instruct

an assistant (confederate) to

press the switches, 92.5%

shocked to the maximum 450

volts.

This relates to Milgram\'s

Agency Theory.

Uniform Condition Touch Proximity Condition

?

?

?

The teacher had to force

the learner\'s hand down

onto a shock plate when

they refuse to participate

after 150 volts.

Obedience fell to 30%.

The participant is no

longer buffered /

protected from seeing

the consequences of

?

?

?

Milgram?s experimenter wore a

laboratory coat (a symbol of

scientific expertise) which gave

him a high status.

But when the experimenter

dressed in everyday clothes

obedience was very low.

The uniform of the authority

figure can give them status.

their actions.

Social Support Condition

?

Absent Experimenter Condition

?

?

?

?

Two other participants

(confederates) were also

teachers but refused to

obey.

Confederate 1 stopped

at 150 volts and

confederate 2 stopped at

210 volts.

The presence of others

who are seen to disobey

the authority figure

reduces the level of

obedience to 10%.

?

?

?

Authority figure distant.

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 shocks or gave less

voltage than ordered to by the

experimenter.

Proximity of authority figure

effects obedience.

Critical Evaluation

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 & 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 really receiving electric shocks.

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 & 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.

Ethical Issues

?

Deception – 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 afterwards 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.

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.

In his defence, 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. Milgram

also interviewed the participants one year after the event and

concluded that most were happy that they had taken part.

?

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 the behaviour was common and

Milgram also followed the sample up a year later and found that

there were no signs of any long term psychological harm. In fact

the majority of the participants (83.7%) said that they were

pleased that they had participated.

?

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).

Did Milgram give participants an opportunity to withdraw? The

experimenter gave four verbal prods which essentially

discouraged withdrawal from the experiment:

1. Please continue.

2. The experiment requires that you continue.

3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.

4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Milgram argued that they are 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.

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. You will be asked to decide if you want to open the files from

their current location or save them to disk. Choose to open them

from their current location. Then press play and sit back and listen!

Clip 1: This is a long audio clip of the 3rd participant administering

shocks to the confederate. You can hear the confederate\'s pleas to be

released and the experimenter\'s instructions to continue.

Clip 2: A short clip of the confederate refusing to continue with the

experiment.

Clip 3: The confederate begins to complain of heart trouble.

Clip 4: Listen to the confederate get a shock: \"Let me out of here. Let

me out, let me out, let me out\" And so on!

Clip 5: The experimenter tells the participant that they must continue.

References

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of

Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.

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

Harpercollins.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of

laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6(4),

282-293.

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.

How to cite this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2007). The Milgram Experiment. Retrieved from

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