THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT

An extremely controversial experiment was the Milgram Experiment. This experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1961 based on the question: 'Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?'. He wanted to view the reluctance of individuals to question authority. To do so, he asked for participants in a learning experiment (stating that he wanted to see how well people would learn through punishment), in order to get more genuine response.

The experiment required a learner (a confederate/actor), a teacher (the participant), and an experimenter (a confederate who accompanied and gave orders to the participant). The participants were males between the ages of 20 and 50, each of them with various jobs. They were paid $4.50 just for showing up. The confederate and participant drew straws to see which role they would receive, but it was rigged so that the participant would always be the teacher. The learner was taken into a separate room and was attached to electrodes. The teacher was placed in a room next door which contained an electric shock generator, accompanied by the experimenter. The electric shock generator was labeled from 15 volts (slight shock), to 375 (Danger: severe shock), to 450 volts (XXX). The learner was asked to memorize a list of word pairs. The teacher and learner communicated using an intercom. The participant gave a word from the list, and the learner would have to recall the word’s partner. The learner often gave purposely incorrect answers, and for each incorrect answer, the teacher had to administer a shock, each one a greater voltage than the last. In reality, the actor would receive 45 volts for each shock. When the teacher refused to give shocks, they would look at the experimenter for further orders, who would give the standard order/4 prods:

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.

At 75 volts, the actor grunted; at 120 volts, the actor would start to complain; at 150 volts the actor would ask to be released from the experiment; at 285 volts the actor let out agonized screams and complain of heart/chest pain; finally, at 330 volts, the actor fell silent.

The experiment found that all participants continued to 300 volts, and 65% of participants continued all the way to 450 volts. Several variations of this experiment showed that a less sophisticated setting/looking experimenter lowered obedience (47.5%); passing on the task of shocking the learner increased obedience to 92.5%; and having to force the teacher’s hand onto a metal plate in order to administer shocks lowered obedience to 30%. There were three types of participants: the obedient ones who blamed the experimenter, the obedient ones who blamed themselves, and the ones who rebelled.

Participants chose to go on at the will of the experimenter even though they knew they were doing severe damage to another innocent human being, and could hear the learner’s complaints and screams (whatever the learners said barely ever changed the obedience level of the teachers). Several of the participants even believed that they had killed the learner. A small percentage of participants objected, even though none of the participants were told that there would be consequences for doing so. In fact, many of the participants believed that the experimenter would take the blame for whatever happened to the learner, which was a big reason why so many participants went to the extent that they did. “In the post experimental interview, when subjects were asked why they had gone on, a typical reply was: “I wouldn’t have done it by myself. I was just doing what I was told (Milgram, 1974, p.8).”