Jessi DeTavernier

PSYC 2301
The Milgram Experiment and Modern Interpretations
Introduction
Obedience, by definition, is compliance with an order, request, or law or
submission to anothers authority. Milgram believes, the essence of obedience is that a
person comes to see himself as the instrument for carrying out another persons wishes,
and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. Once this
critical shift in viewpoint has occurred, all the essential features of obedience follow. The
most far-reaching consequence is that a person feels responsible to the authority
directing him but feels no responsibility for the content of the actions that they authority
prescribes. Morality does not disappear it acquires a radically different focus: the
subordinate person feels shame or pride depending on how adequately he has
performed the actions called for by authority (1973).
By this standard, anyone carrying out a direct order from an authority figure that
is immoral is not responsible for the actions he or she is committing. This would apply to
a nurse carrying out potentially harmful actions towards a patient because they were
told to by a physician. It could be a soldier ordered to murder a house full of families
because they were told to by their Army Chief. Maybe a chef would no longer throw out
expired food because the restaurant owner says they can no longer afford to. These
scenarios would be in accordance to Milgrams statement Ordinary people, simply
doing their jobs, and without any particular hostilitycan become agents in a terrible

destructive process relatively few people have the resources needed to resist
authority (1973).
In Milgrams experiment one of his subjects said in his later interview, What
appalled me was that I could possess this capacity for obedience to a central idea, i.e.,
the value of a memory experiment, even after it became clear that continued adherence
to this value was at the expense of violating another value, i.e., dont hurt someone who
is helpless and not hurting you. As my wife said, You can call yourself Eichmann. I
hope I deal more effectively with any future conflict of values I encounter (Milgram,
1973). This subject had realized that he had refused to take responsibility for his actions
simply because someone told him comply with orders. Many of the subjects behaved
similarly. The fact that the subjects wife compared him to Eichmann is tremendously
insightful, as that was Milgrams entire basis for designing this experiment.
Pre-Experiment
The Milgram Experiment was theorized as a result of Adolph Eichmanns claims
to having been influenced to abandon his morals by an authority figure. Eichmann said
that he was simply following orders when he had millions of Jews killed (Cherry,
2014). These events and explanations intrigued Milgram. At this point he had begun
questioning whether it was actually personality that influenced a persons actions, or
circumstance. The setting and the company, Milgram had begun to think, were greater
influences on the actions people take than the persons personality.
Method
In May, 1962 Milgram began the experiment by gathering 40 men, their ages
varying from 20 to 50 (Milgram Experiment - Big History NL, threshold 6, 2013). The

experiment took place at Yale University, giving it a credible atmosphere. Each

participant was told they were to be the teachers, while another (non-existing) group
would be the learners.

Perry, 2013

The teachers were told that they would be asking the learners various
questions. Incorrect answers to these questions would result in the teacher flipping the
switch on a panel of the shock generator with switches of increasing voltage. They were
labeled ominously with things such as slight shock, moderate shock, danger: severe
shock and finally XXX as shown above (Cherry, 2014).
The panel of switches was fully functional, however the learner was not actually
receiving the shocks from the teacher. The learner
had previously recorded sounds of pain and reactions
to various levels of voltage, and set them to be played
accordingly when the teacher flipped the switch.
The image to the left shows the
relationships between the participants as the L
Singer, 2008

(teacher) would have perceived the V (authority

figure) and the S (learner). As you can see from the image, the teacher could not tell
who the learner was or even where they were, but the authority figure was right behind
them, watching.
Obviously, the subject could not see the acting learner. However, they could
hear the pre-recorded tapes of the learners shouts of pain, demands to be released,
and even complaints of having heart problems (Milgram Experiment - Big History NL,
threshold 6, 2013).
At this point, if the subjects became unsure of whether to continue, the
administrator would gently tell them to continue. If they became even more hesitant, the
authority figure would say something along the lines of It is absolutely vital that you
continue (Milgram Experiment - Big History NL, threshold 6, 2013). This continued
taking place until the point where the subject would administer the full voltage onto the
learner.
Taking Place during the Experiment
Before the experiment the subject would be introduced to the learner and
briefed on the procedure of the experiment. However, they were not aware that they
were being deceived, and were not actually hurting anyone. They were told that they
would need to shock the learner for incorrect answers. And before they began the
subject was given a 45 volt shock from the shock generator to implant in their minds the
authenticity of the machine (Milgram, 1973).
During the experiment the authority figure would reside behind the subject, or
teacher. The subject would be asking questions through a microphone and waiting to
hear responses through a speaker. The learner would purposefully answer many

questions incorrectly. This caused the subject to have to frequently induce a shock of
increasing voltage onto the learner (Milgram, 1973).
Each teacher of the 40 males was subjected to the same situation. The same
authority figure resided in the same spot. The same recordings were played at the same
intervals. The same prodding suggestions were said from the authority figure if the
subject became unsure or hesitant on whether or not he should continue.
Milgrams Findings
The purpose of the experiment was to observe where people would draw the
line, if told to do something against their own moral compass. The highest voltages that
the subjects would impose on another person were used to measure the results of the
experiment. Milgram asked a class of Yale students: How many participants do you
think will be willing to administer the maximum amount of voltage? The students came
to the hypothesis that 3 out of 100 would administer the maximum amount of voltage
(Cherry, 2014).
Milgrams experiment found, however, that 65% of people would administer the
maximum amount of voltage. This means that out of all the subjects under study (40
subjects), 26 of them reached the highest level (Cherry, 2014). However, many of the
subjects that continued on to administer full voltage became angry at the authority
figure. They vocalized their discomfort of the situation, but continued on. One man said
Alright, I wont be responsible (Milgram Experiment - Big History NL, threshold 6,
2013).
After the experiment all of the subjects were told that there was no harm done to
any person. That they had used deception in order to most accurately represent real-

world results. While some critics may say that the participants were confused and
agitated by the experiment, even after the debriefing, studies have shown that only 1%
of the subjects regretted their involvement (Cherry, 2014).
Modern Day
While this experiment was readily accepted in the 1960s by people who had just
experienced the horror of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, the question is raised: Would
this behavioral experiment have similar outcomes and acceptance in todays world?
Changes in social norms would have to be taken into consideration, as well as ethical
procedures for experimentation.
The Modified Milgram Experiment
A modified Milgram experiment that was published in 2014 studied the types of
people more likely to harm others because they were told to. It resembled Milgrams
experiment in the way that people were asked to go against their values, but differed in
a few ways. The people were interviewed for eight months prior to the experiment, to
find their personality type, their political views, and their personal history (Shim, 2014).
During this experiment it was found that people with more passive and nice
personality traits were more likely to cower to the authority figure and ignore their
morals, whereas people with more antisocial or argumentative personality traits were
more likely to stand up for their beliefs and not harm another person.
A common trait between the people who refused to hurt anyone were people with
left-wing political views (Shim, 2014). They also found that women who had previously
participated in rebellious political activism such as strikes or occupying a factory were
would not participate in hurting another person (Shim, 2014).

The findings from this experiment correlates with Milgrams findings in the fact
that the majority of people were likely to ignore their values because they felt a lack of
responsibility toward the person they were harming.
Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today?
In 2009, Jerry M. Burger replicated Milgrams experiment in a modern setting
with set precautions. The procedure was fairly similar, except for the fact that instead of
going to Milgrams maximum voltage, Burger only set the subjects to go to 150 volts,
which is when the learners from Milgrams experiment began to voice their pain
(Burger, 2009).
In this experiment, 70% of the participants would have gone past the 150 volt
mark (Burger, 2009). At this point, they had to be stopped by the experimenter, as that
was the set limitation, for cautionary purposes. This is lower than Milgrams findings in
his experiment at this point, which was 82.5% (Burger, 2009).
This experiment is particularly interesting because it resembles so closely to
Milgrams results, even in modern day. The reason for this is that there were more
outlets for the subjects to refuse, and it was much easier for them to refuse in Burgers
experiment. But still the results were eerily close.
Conclusion
Obedience is shown to be a social norm that has been engraved upon us since,
at the very least, 50 years ago. Milgram experimented in the 1960s and 1970s and
found that people will obey authority figures doing unsightly deeds simply because they
tell themselves that the blame will fall on the authority figure, not onto them.

Although people think that we have changed since, modern experiments say
otherwise, showing a shockingly similar end result. Burger replicated Milgram and found
results that were only slightly below Milgrams results.
The conclusion that we can draw from these experiments is that to obey is a key
factor in human conscious. And that if we can be convinced that we are doing
something for the benefit of mankind. We are not just angry and violent beings waiting
for an outlet to blame our rash actions on, but we are more easily manipulated than
many believe.

References
Breckler, S. J., Olson, J. M., & Wiggins, E. C. (2006). Social Psychology Alive. Belmont,
CA: Cengage Learning.
Burger, J. M., (2009) Replicating Milgram [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://
cms.scu.edu/cas/psychology/faculty/upload/Replicating-Milgrampdf.pdf
Cherry, K. (2014). The Milgram obedience experiment: The perils of obedience.
Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/
milgram.htm
Milgram, S. (1973). The perils of obedience [PDF document]. Retrieved from http://
www.grossmont.edu/bertdill/docs/perilsobed.pdf
Milgram Experiment - Big History NL, threshold 6 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
Perry, G. (2013). Milgrams obedience experiments. Retrieved from http://www.ginaperry.com/behind-the-shock/milgrams-obedience-experiments/
Shim, E. (2014) Modified Milgram experiment finds leftists less inclined to follow
destructive orders. Constantine Report: On the Far Right. Retrieved from
http://www.constantinereport.com/modified-milgram-experiment-finds-leftistsless-inclined-follow-orders-injure-subjects/
Singer, K. N. (2008). The milgram obedience experiment. Retrieved from https://suite.io/
k-n-singer/17m32t4